The aims of the study The study aims to: Investigate how the English speakers express commands in different situations.. Scope of the study The research is towards a contrastive anal
Rationale of the study
At secondary and high schools, while learning English, I was taught to pay much attention to words, sentence patterns, grammatical rules, etc out of contexts, i.e we only focused on the linguistic competence To go further, I had a chance of studying Pragmatics, Contrastive Analysis and Discourse Analysis in which I was much interested, especially the notion of Speech act which explains that “communication competence includes not only knowledge of the linguistics forms of a language but also knowledge of when, how and to whom it is appropriate to use these forms” (Hymes,
I thought that a research on speech acts will be helpful to my communication competence in real contexts In addition, speech acts are also the concern of the whole community using the language It can be said that “how to do things with words” is an issue throughout the ages Speech acts help the language speakers mutually understand and communicate effectively
Among various kinds of speech acts such as apology, invitation, offer, complaint, advice, promise, command, greeting, ect the speech act of command interests me most for its popularity and diversity People widely use it in daily conversation (e.g Give her my thanks!/ Này, khẽ chứ!), in instruction (e.g Trước hết hãy lấy cái xoong sạch / Now you sit in my chair, watch my way of doing it and take a lesson!), in advertising (e.g Hãy thưởng thức! Let‟s join!) Those who are close, as well as those who first meet each other, also use it, regardless of their ages Moreover, the research on commands, as far as I am concerned, has not been carried out yet
For the above things, I decided to choose the topic „ Contrastive analysis of commands in English and Vietnamese ‟, the research on which is very useful for Vietnamese learners of English and also for those who care about the way English and Vietnamese speakers express commands
2 The aims of the study
Investigate how the English speakers express commands in different situations
Find out how commands are expressed differently by the Vietnamese speakers
Help English or Vietnamese learners improve their sociocultural competence in order to appropriately express commands in the second language
Show the different forms of commands in English and Vietnamese and some factors that have influences on them
Show the frequency of using commands in communication
The research is towards a contrastive analysis of commands in English and Vietnamese Within the scope of study, we mainly focus on the forms which English and Vietnamese speakers use to give commands and the ways of expression in order to achieve effectiveness in communication
We also study some factors related to the speech act of command and its frequency in a micro scope
Several methods are used in the study:
This method is used for describing theoretical background, such as the definition of CA, classification of speech acts, the rules of command interpretation, ect
This method is used for collecting materials and funny stories from a variety of sources
This method is used for analysing the materials and the data before we achieve results
This method is used for contrasting and comparing the way English and Vietnamese speakers use to express commands
The thesis comprises of three main parts: introduction, contents and conclusion
In part A, introduction, we introduce the rationale, the aims, the scope, the methods and the design of study
Part B, contents, is the most important one which consists of three chapters Chapter 1 provides an overview of the theoretical background of the research Chapter 2 briefly presents the research questions, data collection instruments and procedures used in the study The results are also outlined in the chapter Chapter 3 gives a full presentation and discussion for the contrastive analysis of commands in English and Vietnamese
Part C, conclusion, summarizes what we mention and discuss in the previous part Some suggestions for further studies are pointed out in this part
References are listed in the last page
This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background of the reseach and consists of four main sections: Contrastive analysis, speech acts, the sentence and commands
When people attempt to study a pair of languages with a view to identifying the structural differences and similarities, they are doing CA
Carl James, in his book published in 1980, states that CA is a linguistics enterprise aimed at producing inverted (i.e contrastive, not comparative) two-valued typologies and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared In other words, CA is viewed as an interlinguistic, bidirectional phenomenon which is concerned with both form and function of languages As such, CA must view languages psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically as a system to be both described and acquired
CA is also presented as a useful contributor to studies in interlanguage and error prediction and diagnosis Combined with error analysis, CA is a useful tool for educators interested in adjusting their teaching to their students‟ knowledge
Whatever kind of CA somebody is doing, he/she needs to find out the differences and similarities between the two languages although CA focuses on differences
Another item which should be reviewed is “pure” and “applied” CA First, we give a thought to “pure” and “applied” linguistics “Pure” linguistics is the theoretical studies, and “applied” linguistics, as Corder suggests, is not a science in its own right, but merely a technology based on
Corder (1973:10) states that “the application of linguistics knowledge to some object – or applied linguistics, as its name implies – is an activity
It is not a theoretical study It makes use of theoretical studies The applied linguist is a consumer, or user, not a producer, of theories.”
The answer to the question “Is CA a form of “pure” or “applied” linguistics?” is – of both It has been assumed that a procedure whereby each of the two language involved in the CA has been analysed independently beforehand, after which the two resulting analyses are juxtaposed for purposes of comparison The CA would seem therefore to involved to phases, the first being that of independent description (pure linguistics) and the second that of comparison (applied linguistics)
Within the scope of study, we do an applied CA, a branch of
Making a statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but there are all sorts of other things we can do with words Yule, G (1996: 47) states that “in attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts” Thereby speech acts can be defined as utterances that serve functions in communication, or acts of communication
We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, refusal and so on A speech act might contain just one word, as in “sorry!” to perform an apology, or several words or sentences like: “I‟m sorry I forgot your birthday I just let it slip my mind.”
Speech acts include real-life interations and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that language within a given context and culture The same utterance can be interpreted as different kinds of speech acts in different contexts and cultures For example, the utterance “Where are you going?” is likely to be interpreted as a greeting in Vietnamese culture but a question in Western countries
Austin divides the action performed by producing an utterance into three related acts First, there is a locutionary act, “the act of saying something” Second, there is an illocutionary act, the idea of which can be captured by emphasising that “by saying something, we do something” Third, there is a perlocutionary act, depending on which the addressee does something
In other words, a locutionary act is the basis act of utterance It produces a meaningful utterance An illocutionary act has force, it performs a function via utterance A perlocutionary act has an effect upon the addressee However, these three acts are not altogether separable For instance, by describing an imminently dangerous situation (locutionary act) in a tone that is designed to have the force of warning (illocutionary act) the speaker may actually frighten the hearer into moving (perlocutionary act)