Enhancing efl learners speech act performance disagreement strategies in english and vietnamese

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES ENHANCING EFL LEARNERS’ SPEECH ACT PERFORMANCE – DISAGREEMENT STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNA

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

ENHANCING EFL LEARNERS’ SPEECH ACT PERFORMANCE – DISAGREEMENT STRATEGIES

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by PHAN LÊ HỒNG CẨM

Supervisor NGUYỄN HOÀNG TUẤN, PhD

HO CHI MINH CITY, FEBRUARY 2008

Ho Chi Minh City, February 2008

PHAN LE HONG CAM

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, PHAN LE HONG CAM, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) accepted the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’ Thesis

deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Masters’ Thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan and reproduction for

theses

Ho Chi Minh City, February, 2008

Signature PHAN LE HONG CAM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr Nguyễn Hoàng Tuấn, who always gave so freely of his time and advice for my thesis His thoughtful and insightful comments and precious instructions enriched my study in many ways I would have not finished the thesis without his constant enthusiastic support

and guidance

My greatest appreciation goes to all the informants for completing the questionnaires that contributes a vital part to the success of my thesis The thesis would have never been possible without the businesspeople, teachers and students who were very responsible to the survey questionnaires My heartfelt appreciation is especially expressed to

Mr Phan Thanh Hùng for his great assistance in distributing and

collecting the questionnaires

My special thanks are delivered to my best friends who inspired me initial ideas for the thesis and gave me useful advice and support in

searching materials and mechanical techniques Especially, Ms Leâ Bích Thuûy was of great help to me for her relevant references

Last but not least, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my family, my husband and my little daughter for their love, understanding and support, without which I would hardly have been able to complete it

ABSTRACT

This thesis examined the use of disagreement strategies by native speakers of English and Vietnamese to status unequals in academic and business setting Its study was mainly based on the questionnaires delivered to three groups of informants The English native speaker group included 30 students and teachers and 31 businessmen and businesswomen Similarly, the numbers of respondents in Vietnamese native speaker group were 30 and 32 respectively The last group representing Vietnamese EFL learners was 30 junior students of Department of English Linguistics of Literature (USSH)

The data analysis revealed the strategy preference and wordings they chose and how style shifting occurred on the basis of the role relationships and the status of the interlocutors Also, some pragmatic transfers in Vietnamese EFL learners’ usage of disagreement were

figured out for the purpose of enhancing their speech act’s

disagreement, transfers are unavoidable The failure of advanced learners to perform this challenging speech act in the target language

was observed in this study

From the results of the study, the thesis suggests first some

recommendations for language classroom in general, and then some activities that are believed to be useful for pragmatic development in general and enhancing EFL learners’ performance of the challenging

speech act of disagreement in particular

ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

CLT Communicative Language Teaching DCT Discourse Completion Test EFL English as a Foreign Language ENS English native speakers FTA Face threatening act

H Hearer

S Speaker VEL Vietnamese learners of English VNS Vietnamese native speakers

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Possible strategies for doing FTAs -13 Figure 2.2 Components of language competence -15

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Background information on the participants - 25

Table 4.1 Overall percentages of disagreement strategies used in academic setting - 34 Table 4.2 The frequency of major strategies in disagreement used in Situation 1 (higher to lower status) - 36 Table 4.3 The frequency of major strategies in disagreement used in Situation 2 (lower to higher status) - 40

Table 4.4 Overall percentages of disagreement strategies used in academic setting - 44

Table 4.5 The frequency of major strategies in disagreement used in Situation 3 (higher to lower status) - 45

Table 4.6 The frequency of major strategies in disagreement used in Situation 2 (lower to higher status) - 50

Table 4.7 Lists of preferred strategies used by ENS and VNS groups in academic setting - 57

Table 4.8 Lists of preferred strategies used by ENS and VNS groups in business setting - 61

Table 4.9 The frequency of major strategies in disagreement used in academic setting - 67 Table 4.10 The frequency of major strategies in disagreement used in academic setting - 69

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 4.1 The influence of status on directness level in English disagreement in academic setting - 58 Chart 4.2 The influence of status on directness level in Vietnamese disagreement in academic setting - 59 Chart 4.3 The influence of status on directness level in English disagreement in business setting - 62

Chart 4.4 The influence of status on directness level in Vietnamese disagreement in business setting - 63

CONTENT TABLE

Page Certificate of originality - i Retention and use of the thesis - ii Acknowledgements - iii

Abstract -iv

Abbreviations -vi

List of figures -vii

List of tables -viii

List of charts - x

Content table -xi

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION - 1

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY - 1

1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY - 4

1.3 DELIMITATIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY - 4

1.4 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY - 5

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW - 6

2.1 THEORY OF SPEECH ACTS - 6

2.1.1 Definitions of speech acts - 6

2.1.2 Felicity condition and classification of speech acts - 7

2.1.3 Direct and Indirect speech act - 9

2.2 THEORY OF POLITENESS - 10

2.2.1 Face and face threatening acts (FTAs) - 10

2.2.2 Politeness strategies - 11

2.2.2.1 Positive politeness - 11

2.2.2.2 Negative politeness - 12

2.2.2.3 Politeness model - 13

2.3 PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE AND PRAGMATIC TRANSFER - 13 2.3.1 Definition of pragmatics - 13

2.3.2 Pragmatic competence - 14

2.3.3 Pragmatic transfer - 15

2.4 THE NOTION OF DISAGREEMENT - 17

2.4.1 Disagreement as a speech act - 17

2.4.2 Disagreement as a positive FTA - 18

2.5 SOCIOLINGUISTICS RELATING TO THE TEACHING AND

LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN VIETNAM 19

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY - 21

3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS - 21

3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN - 22

3.3 DESCRIPTION OF PARTICIPANTS - 22

3.3.1 The first group of participants - 23

3.3.2 The second group of participants - 24

3.3.3 The third group of participants - 24

3.4 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENT - 25

3.4.1 The rationale for choosing DCTs - 25

3.4.2 Description of the DCT - 26

3.5 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE - 27

3.6 DATA ANALYSIS - 29

3.7 SUMMARY - 32

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS - 33

4.1 PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS - 33

4.1.1 The similarities and differences of disagreement strategy use between groups in academic setting - 34

4.1.1.1 Overall findings - 34

4.1.1.2 Situation 1 (higher to lower status) -35

4.1.1.3 Situation 2 (lower to higher status) -40

4.1.2 The similarities and differences of disagreement strategy use between groups in business setting -44

4.1.2.1 Overall findings -44

4.1.2.2 Situation 3 (higher to lower status) -45

4.1.2.3 Situation 4 (lower to higher status) -50

4.1.3 The influence of social status on the choice of disagreement strategies 56 4.1.3.1 Academic setting -56

4.1.3.2 Business setting -61

4.1.4 Pragmatic transfer in disagreement strategies of EFL learners -65

4.1.4.1 Academic setting -66

4.1.4.2 Business setting -69

4.2 SUMMARY AND DISCUSSSION OF THE FINDINGS -71

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS -79

5.1 CONCLUSION -79

5.2 RECOMMENDATION -82

5.2.1 Some recommendations for language classroom -83

5.2.2 Activities aiming at raising students’ pragmatic awareness -86

5.2.2.1 Observation tasks -86

5.2.2.2 Analysis of speech acts -87

5.2.3 Activities offering opportunities for communicative practice -89

5.2.3.1 Productive tasks: Controlled -89

5.2.3.2 Productive tasks: Free -90

BIBLIOGRAPHY -93

APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ENS - 102

APPENDIX 2: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR VNS - 104

APPENDIX 3: QUESTIONNAIRE FOR VIETNAMESE EFL STUDENTS - 106

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

In recent decades, linguistics research has been witnessed to shift from focusing on forms to focusing on both forms and functions These fundamental changes reflect an emerging view in which language is treated

as a communicative activity rather than an isolated set of grammatical rules Following these developments, the field of language teaching has welcomed the arrival of the Communicative Language Teaching (hence called CLT) approach With a view to developing learners’ communicative competence, CLT specifies that teaching and learning a language should be about how to

use language appropriately for communicative purpose in real-life interactional contexts (Brown, 1987)

Indeed, one problem puzzles every foreign language learner is the appropriateness of language use, which varies from context to context, from one language to another and from one culture to another Therefore, appropriateness or ‘politeness’, to use the term proposed by Brown and Levinson, is interpreted differently by people of different cultural backgrounds in different contexts Culture shock or communication breakdown often happens in cross-cultural interactions Ability to interact successfully in a foreign language speech community depends on communicative competence, of which sociolinguistic rules are an important aspect Thus, in language teaching, raising learners’ awareness of the social conventions and expectations of the target community is crucial

Given its significance in language teaching, sociolinguistics has received a great deal of attention since the early 1980s Sociolinguistics is the study of the ‘interplay of linguistic, social, and cultural factors in human communication’ (Wolfson, 1989); in which speech act analysis contributes an important branch However, much of earlier research has been restricted

to a rather ‘small and relatively well-defined set of speech acts (e.g requesting, complimenting, thanking, and inviting)’ (Ellis (1994), cited in Minh (2005)) Although current sociolinguistic research has begun to take greater interest in potentially more complex speech acts such as disagreement, the number of studies addressing these speech acts is still rather limited

In Vietnam, because of the strong influence from the communicative movement in language teaching, concerns about how to improve learners’ communicative competence and provide more sociolinguistic information in language classroom have been grown More and more sociolinguistic studies have done, of which majority has focused on comparing and contrasting between English and Vietnamese speech acts Those have provided precious feedback for Vietnamese teachers of English, yet not enough if compared to the need for socio-cultural knowledge in teaching and learning English in such a fast-developing country as Vietnam

To the best of my knowledge, there has been no research regarding the speech act of disagreement published in Vietnam until now Thus the study reported in this thesis has been conducted in an attempt to meet the obvious need for more cross-cultural sociolinguistic research and simultaneously to expand the scope of speech acts given consideration Data and analysis of this research, hopefully, can be utilized in teaching and learning English as a foreign language (hence called EFL) in Vietnam

The rationale for choosing to investigate the speech act of disagreement also lies in its importance in real life interaction As we know, today is the time of conversation in which every trouble can be negotiated and solved In the process of negotiation, each participant can show his point

of view, disagree to the others, accept something, and then disagree another thing, and so on until they reach an agreement This can be seen everywhere from the market to the politics negotiating tables Thus disagreement

occupies an essential role in the process of discussion and negotiation in every matter of social life

On the other hand, disagreement is intrinsically impolite (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 66), so how to avoid threats to the hearer’s face and consolidate the relationship between individuals is of great necessity In addition, disagreement is also sensitive to other sociolinguistic variables, such as status of the interlocutor The negotiation process with interlocutors

of status unequal is complex intrinsic and how to express one’s disagreement while maintaining status balance is never an easy task, especially when using

a foreign language

In addition, because of time and scope limitation, the study can not cover all cases of disagreement as they happen in real life communication Hence only two environments that might be the most close to Vietnamese EFL learners are chosen: academic setting and business setting Those are the reasons why this study focuses on disagreement with unequal status interlocutors in academic and business setting in the hope to find out some results of most benefit to Vietnamese learners

1.2 Aims of the study

The following goals are expected to be accomplished in undertaking the current study:

1 Theoretically, by investigate English and Vietnamese

unequal status interlocutors’ choice of disagreement strategies, the study seeks to add to the growing body of sociolinguistics research

2 Practically, it is hoped that this study will provide helpful

information about the interlingua use of the important but under-researched speech act _ disagreement

3 Pedagogically, the results should help English teachers

anticipate where Vietnamese learners may experience

‘culture and language clashes’ and work out ways to help them overcome or at least minimize the possibility of communication breakdown, especially for performing this speech act effectively in academic and business settings

1.3 Delimitations and limitations of the study

The present study focuses on the speech act of disagreement, thus its findings may not be generalized to other kinds of speech acts In addition, because of the complex nature of disagreeing behavior with interlocutors of status unequals, the study chooses to focus on this social factor only, regardless of other variables such as age and gender Secondly, within the scope’s limit, only two settings – academic and business - are given consideration Hence the study’s conclusions need not be true to disagreement in other contexts Finally, the study only investigates the

linguistic aspects of disagreement, thus paralinguistic and non-linguistic aspects will be outside the scope of inquiry

1.4 Organization of the study

This thesis consists of five chapters Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the background to the research and states the aims and limits the scope of the study as well as outlines the structure of the thesis Chapter 2 reviews the literature relevant to the topic of research Chapter 3 presents the research methodology employed in this thesis Chapter 4 report and discuss the main findings according to the research questions Finally, Chapter 5 offers a conclusion of the study with pedagogical implications, and proposes further research

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the theories and literature relevant to the topic under investigation in the present study First, theory of speech acts is summarized to provide theoretical frameworks for the research Next, because the intrinsic nature of disagreement is impolite, so how to performing this speech act while maintaining social relationship is of great necessity Hence, the politeness phenomenon and theory of politeness should

be given adequate consideration Then the speech act of disagreement is defined and the notion of disagreement in some existing researches is reviewed in order to bring an overall view Finally, sociolinguistics relating

to the teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam is also briefly reviewed to indicate the gap that this study would fill in

2.1 Theory of speech acts

Speech act theory is one of the central issues in general pragmatic researches (Levinson, 1983)

2.1.1 Definitions of speech acts

The notion of speech acts dates back to the British language

philosopher – J Austin (1962) In his influential book entitled How to do

things with words, Austin made an interesting point that in saying something,

one is actually doing something This view is considered a breakthrough in linguistics since it points out that many everyday language declarative sentences are not intended to make true or false statements Rather, they are used to ‘do things’, that is, to perform certain linguistic actions such as requesting, complimenting, apologizing, and so on

Those utterances were then termed ‘performatives’ by Austin Austin conceptualized performatives as involving three acts, namely locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary - the three kinds of acts that, according to him, constitute what people ‘do with words’ Of these, a locutionary act is defined as the act of vocalizing a sentence and assigning a propositional meaning to it An illocutionary act is the one of performing a particular

language function and a perlocutionary act is the one of producing some kind

of effect on the addressee The core interest of Austin as well as of other pragmatists is the illocutionary act, which Austin later termed ‘speech act’ (Levinson, 1983)

2.1.2 Felicity conditions and classification of speech acts

Another important contribution by Searle is his attempt to use Austin’s felicity conditions to categorize speech acts Austin noticed that although performatives cannot be verified as true or false, they can go wrong, i.e they can be asserted as felicitous or infelicitous Hence, there must be certain conditions for them to be successfully performed and their illocutionary force to be achieved Searle, however, emphasized that felicity conditions are not only dimensions in which utterances can go wrong as was suggested by Austin, but they are also constitutive of the various illocutionary forces, and therefore, can differentiate illocutionary acts from one another For example, in performing the act of promising, speaker must:

(1) say he or she will perform a future action,

(2) intend to do it,

(3) believe he or she can do it,

(4) think he or she would not do it anyway, in the normal course of action,

(5) think the addressee wants him or her to do it (rather than not to do it), and

(6) intend to place himself or herself under obligation to perform it

These conditions are actually constitutive of promising and therefore can differentiate promising from other speech acts such as threatening, complaining, and so on Searle classified those felicity conditions into four kinds which he termed ‘propositional content conditions’, ‘preparatory preconditions’, ‘conditions on sincerity’, and ‘the essential conditions’ Among them,

‘Propositional content conditions’ concern reference and predication (the propositional act), therefore they are most textual;

‘Preparatory preconditions’ are concerned with the relationship between S and H, and H’s will, benefit, or ability The act of commanding, for example, is usually performed by a person of higher status but not the other way around;

‘Sincerity conditions’, on the other hand, refer to S’s ‘psychological state’ in performing a specific linguistic action For example, when one

‘announces’ something, one must believe in it;

‘Essential conditions’ are about the obligations and responsibility assigned to S or H once the act is performed Upon promising, for example,

S is under the obligation to perform what is promised

Then, by considering the purpose of an act from the speaker’s perspective, Searle classified speech acts into five categories:

1 Declaratives: bring out changes in the world (e.g announce, name, etc.)

2 Representatives: state what S believes to be the case or not (e.g assert, report, describe, etc.)

3 Directives: try to get H to do something (e.g order, request, etc.)

4 Commissive: commit S to do something (e.g promise, threat, etc.)

5 Expressive: express feeling and attitudes (e.g apologize, thank, etc.)

2.1.3 Direct and Indirect speech act

Searle (1969, 1975), based on Austin’s work, put forward the important notion of indirect speech acts According to Searle, direct speech acts enjoy a transparent relationship between form and function Indirect speech acts, on the other hand, display no such relationship, and therefore, their illocutionary force does not derive from their surface structure The phenomenon of ‘indirect speech acts’ is considered universal across all languages and those indirect speech acts that make up the majority in everyday conversations

The distinction between direct and indirect speech acts plays an important part in speech act theory According to Yule (1996), distinguishing types of speech acts can also be made on the basis of structure There are

three general communicative functions: statement, question and command/request and three main structural forms: declarative, interrogative and imperative Therefore, “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” (Yule, 1996: 54-55)

Similarly, Searle (1975) states that speakers can perform one illocutionary act implicitly by way of performing another illocutionary act

explicitly Therefore, the utterance “Could you turn on the lights?” which

contains the illocutionary force of an assertion can be used to make a request

Normally people do not unintentionally deliver indirect speech acts Concerning why indirectness is used, Thomas (1995: 143) writes, ‘A variety

of reasons has been put forward for the universal use of indirectness’, including:

- the desire to make one’s language more/less interesting;

- the increase the force of one’s message;

- the principle of expressibility;

- and politeness

Research on speech acts has flourished in the field of applied linguistics and pragmatics within the last decades Numerous studies on speech acts exist yet they are not compatible with the number of cultures in the world More cross-cultural investigations are needed to provide insights

for improved intercultural communication in a world rapidly turning into a global village

2.2 Theory of politeness

Politeness is a dimension that usually enters into speech act performance (Ellis, 1994) This dimension is so crucial that the violation of it may deprive not-so-competent participants such as non-native speakers of the chance to be engaged fully in the speech community as social equals with others (Kasper, 1990) The face theory proposed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) serves as the most influential theory on politeness Brown & Levinson's theory contains three basic notions: face, face threatening acts (hence called FTAs) and politeness strategies

2.2.1 Face and face threatening acts (FTAs)

Fundamental to Brown & Levinson's view of politeness are the concepts of positive and negative face, which come from Goffman’s notion of face Face is defined by Goffman (1967: 319) as “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself”, or “the public self-image that every member of a society wants to claim for himself” Based on this definition, Brown and Levinson define positive face as one’s desire to be approved or accepted by others and negative face as one’s desire to be free from imposition from others These two types of face, in their view, operate pan-

culturally: they can be lost, threatened, damaged, or maintained, and elevated Therefore, they need to be continually attended to in the process

of communication so that politeness can be achieved

Brown and Levinson also claim that certain speech acts are inherently face-threatening, i.e they may threaten either the positive or the negative face of the interlocutors involved Those are defined as face- threatening acts (FTAs) including acts such as disagreements, requests, refusals, commands, or orders, etc

2.2.2 Politeness strategies

On these grounds, they put forward the notions of positive politeness and negative politeness, and a politeness model consisting of a number of steps that people usually take in performing a particular speech act

2.2.2.1 Positive politeness

Positive politeness is oriented toward the positive face of H Positive politeness minimizes the FTAs by reassuring the H that he or she is valued

by the S, that somehow the S wants what the H wants, or that H is included

as a member of the same in-group

Unlike negative politeness, positive politeness is not necessarily redressive of the particular face want infringed by the FTA; that is, ‘the

linguistic realizations of positive politeness are in many respects simply representative of the normal linguistic behavior between intimates, where interest and approval of each other […] are routinely exchanged’(Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987:101)

2.2.2.2 Negative politeness

Negative politeness, on the other hand, is oriented mainly toward H’s negative face: his want to have his freedom of action unhindered and his attention unimpeded It is the heart of respect behavior, just as positive politeness is the kernel of ‘familiar’ and ‘joking’ behavior

Where positive politeness is free-ranging, negative politeness is specific and focused; ‘it performs the function of minimizing the particular imposition that the FTA unavoidably effects’ (Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987:129))

2.2.2.3 Politeness model

According to this model, there is a choice between positive and negative politeness strategies available to S in a situation that calls for a particular speech act If S opts to perform a face-threatening act (FTA), he

or she estimates the ‘weightiness’, Wx, (i.e the seriousness in terms of loss) of this FTA as follows:

and x is the performed FTA

On the basis of the outcome of the calculation, S then can choose either to ‘go on record’, i.e perform a direct speech act, or to ‘go off record’, i.e opt for more indirect strategies such as metaphor, irony, rhetorical questions, understatement, and all kinds of hints If S chooses a direct strategy, he or she can either ‘go bald on record’ without compensating for it or ‘soften’ it by various politeness strategies In case S decides to modify the illocutionary force of the speech act he or she intends

to perform, he or she will have to consider the pay-off that the use of each type of politeness strategy brings and then make decisions accordingly The politeness model is figured as following:

With redressive On

Off

Do the

Positive

Don’t do the FTA

Without redressive action,

Negative

Figure 2.1 Possible strategies for doing FTAs (Brown and Levinson, 1978 : 69)

2.3 Pragmatic competence and pragmatic transfer

Leech (1983) proposed to subdivide pragmatics into a pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic component In Leech’s definition, pragmalinguistics refers to the linguistic resources used to perform a speech act whereas sociopragmatics is concerned with the social perceptions that govern one’s comprehension and performance of speech acts

Language Competence

Organizational Competence Pragmatic Competence

Grammatical Textual Illocutionary Sociolinguistic

Competence Competence Competence Competence

Figure2.2: Components of language competence

(Bachman (1990) cited in Kasper (1997))

As Bachman’s model makes clear, pragmatic competence is not subordinated to knowledge of grammar and text organization but coordinated to formal linguistic and textual knowledge and interacts with

‘organizational competence’ in complex way In order to communicate successfully in a target language, pragmatic competence in L2 must be reasonable well developed

is typical in English to make indirect requests by using a question form, such

as “Can you pass the salt?’ or “Why don’t you close the window?” If a native speaker of English, learning another language such as Russian, were

to such an indirect request literally, the Russian would not be able to interpret the utterance as a request and would instead hear it as a question

Sociopragmatic transfer, on the other hand, refers to the process whereby learners’ subjective judgment of the equivalence between L1-L2 contexts affects the social perceptions underlying their comprehension and production of an L2 speech act Since societies differ in their consideration

of what, when and where is appropriate, misunderstandings often occur in cross–cultural communication For example, common questions from Asian

on first encounters such as “Are you married?” and “How old are you?”

may cause offense for English speakers, as does the common question from Arabs, “How much did that cost?” (Wofson, 1989)

The distinction between pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic transfer

is considered useful and pedagogically significant (Thomas, 1983) It is useful because it reveals that learners transfer not only their L1 linguistic features but also their cultural values, concepts of politeness, and their perceptions of social distance and power when performing an illocution in the target language According to the above distinction, sociopragmatic transfer is taken more interest than pragmalinguistic transfer in this study

A distinction between positive and negative transfer is also made here Based on Kasper (1992), the kind of transfer that results in IL behavior that is consistent with the target norms is regarded as “positive”

On the other hand, the kind of transfer that causes IL deviation from the target norms is considered “negative” As suggested by Kasper, positive transfer in this study is statistically based on a lack of significant differences

in the frequencies with which a pragmatic feature is used by the learners and the two native speaker groups (VEL=VNS=ENS) It is not possible to isolate positive transfer from foreign language acquisition process Thus, positive transfer is not discussed, and transfer in the following analysis refers to negative transfer, i.e situation where dissimilarity between Vietnamese group and English community is considered to be due, at least in part, to influence from native Vietnamese patterns and culture

2.4 The notion of disagreement

2.4.1 Disagreement as a speech act

A large number of different definitions of disagreement have been provided by a number of researchers, in varying degrees of detail Rees- Miller (2000) defines disagreement as an act where ‘a speaker disagrees when he/she consider untrue some proposition P uttered […] by an addressee and reacts with an utterance the propositional content or implicature of

which is not P’ Another detailed definition comes from Sornig (1977) who

regards the speech act of disagreement as ‘any utterance that comments upon a pre-text by questioning part of its semantic or pragmatic information, correcting or negating it’ The most detailed definition, however, is proposed by Pearson (1984), cited in Stadler (2006)

The function agreement/ disagreement occurs as an optional second pair part of an adjacency pair As such, agreement/ disagreement is a response move to an initiation move made by a prior speaker […] in order for agreement/ disagreement to follow a second pair part […] the first speaker must assign some kind of personal judgment to the referent […] Agreement/ disagreement can not follow an utterance in which the speaker only reports some factual knowledge or information […] Disagreement occurs when the speaker assigns a different or a qualified

assessment to the referent

Although these above researchers differs in details of disagreement definitions, they all agree that ‘disagreement needs to contain some kind of

doubt, uncertainty, opposition or qualification to a prior statement and that

a disagreement has to occur as a second pair part to an initiation move’ (Stadler, 2006)

Therefore, in my study, the speech act of disagreement can be defined

as an utterance that opposes, questions or qualifies a prior utterance or a part of it

2.4.2 Disagreement as a positive FTA

Through employing the speech act of disagreement, S indicate that H

is wrong or unreasonable about some issue, and such wrongness being associated with disapproval It means disagreement ‘(potentially) indicates that the speaker does not care about the addressee’s feelings, wants, etc _ that in some important respect he doesn’t want H’s wants’ (Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987)) Thus, compared with the definition of ‘positive face’

by Brown and Levinson (ibid.) as one’s desire to be approved or accepted by others, the speech act of disagreement by the nature run contrary to the positive face want of the addressee