MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY 2019 – 2021(2) M. THESIS ENGLISH LANGUAGE GIVING AND RESPONDING TO COMPLIMENTS IN ENGLISH IN VALIDATION AND THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (Nghiên cứu cách khen và đáp lại lời khen bằng tiếng Anh trong phim Validation và The devil wears Prada) MAI THI THU DONG Field: English Language Code: 8.01 MAI THỊ THU DONG HANOI – 2021 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M. THESIS GIVING AND RESPONDING TO COMPLIMENTS IN ENGLISH IN VALIDATION AND THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (Nghiên cứu cách khen và đáp lại lời khen bằng tiếng Anh trong phim Validation và The devil wears Prada) MAI THI THU DONG Field: English Language Code: 8. TRAN THI LE DUNG HANOI – 2021 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “Giving and responding to compliments in English in Validation and The devil wears Prada” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language.
Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis. Hanoi, 2021 Mai Thi Thu Dong Approved by SUPERVISOR Date: 10/01/2022 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has been a long journey for me to finish my thesis. There are also many people who walked along with me to support and motivate me during the time of doing the research. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ms.
Tran Thi Le Dung, Ph., my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher. My thanks also go to all my lecturers at Hanoi Open University for their precious knowledge which lay the foundation for this study, my colleagues and many others whose support and encouragement help me to have this thesis accomplished. Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family and friends for their patience, endless love, and devotion. Whatever choices I have made, they have always stood by me and believed in me.
I am immensely thankful for all the assistance they have given to me. ii ABSTRACT Every human living in this world is created as a social creature. He/she always needs other people in his/her society to fulfill his/her social needs. In order to meet his/her social needs as a social creature, people have to be able to communicate or interact with the society.
To communicate, people need language which is one of tools of communication. The use of language can be found in conversations. Thus, conversation is a real form of language uses. It is an exchange of words, sentences and many other expressions that happen when two or more people are involved in talking about a certain thing in a certain situation.
There are some many studies of famous theorists on kinds of speech act such as: making request, asking for permission, giving apology. but not many of them focus on speech act of compliments. This is also the interesting topic attracting the author’s interest because it requires a great deal of pragmatic insight by speakers and therefore are often rich with data that reveal the orientation of language learners. Moreover, responding to compliments is vital to everyday communication.
In this study, the author would like to investigate the way people give and respond to compliments in English by analyzing compliments and their responses in two films named Validation and The devil wears Prada. Strategies and some implications of giving and responding to compliments in English are concluded in the findings so that English learners and users may have a trustful material to study and use for their daily communications. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AR: Addresser AE: Addressee FTA: Face Threatening Act H: Hearer PS: Politeness Strategy S: Speaker UC: Unknown Character iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1 10 Table 2 19 Table 3 63 Table 4 64 Table 5 64 Table 6 65 Table 7 67 Table 8 70 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii List of abbreviations iv List of tables v Table of contents vi Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 2 1. Methodology of the study 3 1.
Scope of the study 5 1. Significance of the study 5 1. Structure of the study 5 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7 2.1 Previous studies in English 8 2.2 Previous studies in Vietnamese 8 2.2 Review of theoretical background 8 2. Definition of Pragmatics.
Overview of Speech Acts 9 2. Definition of speech acts 9 2. Components of Speech acts 10 2. Classifications of Speech acts 10 2.
Positive Politeness Strategies 13 2. Negative Politeness Strategies 16 vi 2. Compliments and Compliments’ Responses 17 2. Topics of compliments 18 2.
Synopsis of the Film Validation 21 2. Synopsis of the Film The devil wears Prada 22 2. Summary 23 Chapter 3: ANALYSIS AND SOME IMPLICATIONS OF24 COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLIMENTS’ RESPONSES IN THE FILMS VALIDATION AND THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 3.1 Analysis compliments and compliments’ responses of the Validation and The24 devil wears Prada 3. Analysis of Validation 24 3.
Analysis of The devil wears Prada 43 3.2 Topics of compliments 62 3. Compliments on appearance 62 3. Compliments on skills or talents 63 3. Compliments on work accomplished or dedication 64 3.
Compliments on possession 65 3. Giving compliment strategies and their response strategies 67 3. Politeness strategies in Validation 67 3. Politeness strategies in The devil wears Prada 70 3.4 Some implications for English learners when giving and responding to 74 compliments in English 74 3.1 What to compliment on 74 3.How to give a compliment 75 3.
How to respond to compliment 77 vii 3. Top compliment formulas 77 Chapter 4: CONCLUSION 79 4. Limitation of the research 81 4. Recommendations and suggestion for further studies 82 REFERENCES 83 APPENDIX 85 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale Mankind needs to interact and communicate with others in their daily life. One of the most important tools for the communication required is language. Language is a vital tool to show what people feel and think, including spoken or silent language. When people communicate with others, they can know how successful their communication is.
The communication is considered successful when the speaker is aware of what the meaning of utterances and the hearer is able to understand the intended meaning of speakers. However, when someone says something to another one, the one performs not only the certain purpose but also the act. The realization of act in certain social communication is called speech act. Speech act includes apologies, requests, complaints, compliments and responses to compliment.
Holmes (in Paulson and Tucker, 2003) stated compliment as a speech act which explicitly or implicitly points out from the one to someone else. Someone usually praises the others for their good things; such as appearance, character and skills. In addition, Holmes (in Paulson and Tucker, 2003) announced that the main function of a compliment is affective and social rather than referential or informative. It explains that the reasons of misunderstanding and miscommunication failure as there are different norms of complimenting and responding to compliments.
Compliment represents a social strategy in which the speaker tries to create good relationship with the hearer by expressing admiration or approval (Wolfson & Judd, 1983). Compliments are to make the one who is praised feels good. For example, two friends meet and one delivers a compliment: “Your hairstyle is great”. These simple expressions of compliments can create good feeling between them.
Compliment itself has many forms, it is important for people to know on what topics people could deliver compliment. Wolfson in Wolfson and Judd (1983) said that what members of particular cultural group thank or apologize for, or compliment on, usually reflects values, as in performing these speech acts, people are often implicitly assessing the behavior, possessions, accomplishment, character, or appearance. Therefore, specific relationship between the speaker and the hearer also affects the choice of type of compliment considered appropriately. In other words, there is a basic or reason for the people to deliver compliment, it may be based on the appearance, possessions, skills, talents etc.
1 Film is a kind of source of data because it is a representation of real life. Allen and Gomery (1993) declared that the story of the film is a social phenomenon that shows the real life. The movie is considered as a life-image that is acted by the actors and actresses on the screen. Mostly, the story of the films is often taken from reality including the conversation.
This study explores two American films since the films have the richness of data containing compliments and their responses. Validation and The devil wears Prada are films which are meaningful to watch. The sentences in general, the compliments in particular used are not too long and easy to be employed in everyday speaking. A study about compliment has been investigated by Choironi (2013) in her thesis named “Compliment Responses on Facebook Status Used by Foreigners: Gender Perspective.” She used Sociolinguistics approach as the way of the analysis.
This research aimed to describe the distribution of the difference between male and female in giving compliment responses on Facebook status. From the study above, the author would like to understand deeply about compliments and their responses in the movies named Validation and The devil wears Prada that were published in 2007 and 2006 respectively. It is exciting to investigate the varieties of giving and responding compliments that occur in the society which is represented in films. Having different scope of linguistic from the previous study, the writer uses a Pragmatic approach as the scope of the study anh has chosen the topic “Giving and responding to compliments in English in Validation and The devil wears Prada” with the expectation of finding out the main topics of compliments and strategies that can be used when giving and responding to compliments in English through two famous American films: Validation (2007) and The devil wears Prada (2006).
Aims and objectives of the study 1. Aims of the study The study is conducted to help Vietnamese learners of English give and respond to compliments in English correctly and effectively. Objectives of the study To achieve the aims above, the following objectives can be put forward: - To identify topics that the native speakers of English often compliment on the films Validation and The devil wears Prada. - To find out strategies of giving and responding to compliments in English on the films Validation and The devil wears Prada.
2 - To give Vietnamese learners of English some implications of using topics and strategies in giving and responding to compliments in English effectively. Research questions This study intends to answer the following questions: 1. What do the native speakers of English often compliment in the films Validation and The devil wears Prada? 2. What are strategies of giving and responding to compliments in English in the films Validation and The devil wears Prada? 1.
Methodology of the study The methods used in this study include: Research approach. The main aim of the study is to help Vietnamese learners of English give and respond to compliments in English correctly and effectively through pointing out main topics of compliments and strategies of giving and responding to compliments in English in two mentioned films. Therefore, to achieve the aims stated, quantitative and qualitative methods were applied in the study, which are mainly used to analyze compliments and their responses in the films. Major methods and supporting methods Describing and analyzing the compliment categories in English in two films The main method employed in this study is the descriptive method with quantitative and qualitative approach.
Quantitative method can involve collecting quantitative information, involves gathering mass of raw data from different powerful sources.