VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ---------- TRẦN THI YÊ ̣ ́N COMPLIMENTING STRATEGIES BY ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY (CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC KHEN NGỢI CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH TẠI ĐẠI HỌC THÁI NGUYÊN ) M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60.15 Hanoi-2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
vii LIST OF FIGURES. viii LIST OF TABLES. Aims of the Study. Significance of the Study.
Scope of the Study. Cross - Cultural Communication. Definition of Culture. Definition of Communication.
Definition of Cross - Cultural Communication. Speech Act Theory. Definitions of Speech Acts. Types of Speech Acts.
Bach and Harnish‟s Classification. Direct and Indirect Speech Acts. Speech Acts across Cultures. 6 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
What is Politeness?. 7 a) Grice‟s Cooperative Principle. 7 b) Lakoff‟s Politeness Rule. 7 c) Leech‟s Politeness Principle (PP).
Face-management Approach. 8 a) Goffman‟s Conceptualization of Face. 8 b) Brown and Levinson‟s Politeness Theory. The Speech Act of Complimenting.
Definition of Compliments. Functions of Compliments. Complimenting as a Speech Act. Basic Complimenting Strategies.
Modifications of Basic Complimenting Strategies. Direct and Indirect Strategies in Complimenting. Complimenting Strategies in Terms of Personal Focus. Previous Research on Compliments.
Subjects of the Study. Data Collection Instrument. Data Gathering Procedure. REALIZATIONS OF COMPLIMENTING STRATEGIES.
Overall Response Patterns. Expressions Preceding the Compliment. Expressions Following the Compliment. Category of Complimenting Strategies.
Basic Complimenting Strategies .21 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Combinations of Basic Complimenting Strategies. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS. Overall Analysis of the Response Patterns.
Components of the Response Patterns. Comments on the Expressions Preceding and Following the Compliment. Use of Complimenting Strategies. Interference from Vietnamese Culture to the English-major Students‟ Choice of Complimenting Strategies.
Use of Complimenting Strategies with Respect to the Informants. Vietnamese Informants and Vietnamese Learners of English. Use of Complimenting Strategies with Respect to the Communicating Partners. When the Communicating Partners are Male Classmates.
When the Communicating Partners are Female Classmates. When the Communicating Partners are Male Teachers. When the Communicating Partners are Female Teachers. Use of Complimenting Strategies across Topics.
Summary of Major Findings. Limitation of the Study. Suggestions for Further Research. DISCOURSE COMPLETION TEST (English Version).
DISCOURSE COMPLETION TEST (Vietnamese Version) .III vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AmE American English DCT Discourse Completion Task EFL English as a Foreign Language F Face-threatening Acts FTA Face Threatening Act M Male TNU Thai Nguyen University V Vietnamese VE Vietnamese English vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Tables Title Page Table 1. Types of expressions preceding the compliment. Types of expressions following the compliment. Categories of complimenting strategies.
Combinations of basic complimenting strategies. Deviation in the frequency of complimenting strategies between groups. 29 LIST OF FIGURES Figures Title Page Figure 1. Choices of politeness strategy (Brown and Levinson, 1987).
Bach & Harnish‟s categorization of the speech act of complimenting. Components of the response patterns. Complimenting strategies employed by the three groups of 28 informants. Complimenting strategies by male and female American informants.
Complimenting strategies by male and female Vietnamese informants. Complimenting strategies by male and female Vietnamese learners of 32 English. Strategies employed to compliment male classmates. Strategies employed to compliment female classmates.
Strategies employed to compliment male teachers. Strategies employed to compliment female teachers. Strategies employed to compliment on appearance or possessions. Strategies employed to compliment on ability or accomplishment.
39 viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Rationale Learning a language means more than knowing linguistic features such as the rules of grammar or the vocabulary system. We must also know how to use a language in its social and communicative contexts; however, EFL teachers do not often stress pragmatic knowledge in their classrooms, focusing instead on linguistic knowledge. As a result, even with a high level of language proficiency and goodwill, learners still have great difficulty making themselves understood or interpreting properly what is said to them.
They even find it extremely difficult to produce or sometimes understand a speech act such as a compliment, an apology, a request or a refusal. The mistaken messages they send or receive lead not only to breakdowns in communication, but also to bad effects within social relationships. This common problem can also be seen in Vietnamese learners of English. Although they may have spent a long time studying English and done very well on exams, they can not communicate effectively with native speakers.
The barrier here is cultural awareness. They are from different cultures, thus have different frames of reference. Failure in communication can cause what we call “culture shock”. We do things with words as Austin (1962) states.
In our mother tongue and our culture, we face little or no difficulty in employing words appropriately in order to achieve our aim because we unconsciously follow the norms and conventions of our speech community. The speech act of complimenting has been chosen as the topic of the present study because this speech act is highly representative of face-threatening acts and the realization of this speech act is largely culture-specific (Gass, 1995; Liao, 1996). People from different cultures share the same communicative purpose in complimenting each other. However, they tend to use different patterns and strategies and compliment different attributes.
When people compliment each other in a foreign language, the intended purpose may not be achieved, but the reverse may occur. In other words, miscommunication or misinterpretation happens when a user of a foreign language inappropriately compliments others. In Vietnam, in recent years, much research work has been done into various speech acts; however, so far very little research has been carried out in Thai Nguyen University where millions of non-English major students and thousands of English major students are learning and speaking English. With an effort to fill the gap, we carried out this study as an investigation into the speech act of complimenting by English-major students at Thai Nguyen University.
1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Aims of the Study This study aims to find out the preferred strategies by English-major students at Thai Nguyen University when complimenting in English and to identify the interferences from Vietnamese culture to the students‟ choice of strategies. Research Questions The study is intended to address the following questions: [i]. What are the preferred strategies by English-major students at Thai Nguyen University when complimenting in English? [ii].
Is there any interference from Vietnamese culture to the students‟ choice of strategies when complimenting in English? 4. Significance of the Study The researcher hopes that this study will be significant theoretically, practically and pedagogically. Theoretically, the study may contribute to the theoretical literature by examining the interferences from Vietnamese culture to the choice of strategies when complimenting in English by English-major students at Thai Nguyen University. Practically, the study may reinforce these students‟ awareness of the interferences from their culture to their choice of strategies when complimenting in English by investigating what they have already known and what they have not and what proves to be difficult when they are confronted with the complimenting situations, which may help them achieve a better performance in cross-cultural communication.
Pedagogically, research in cross-cultural communication including this paper may help teachers and educators understand the students‟ problems in order to evaluate textbooks and other teaching materials as well as assessment procedures of language proficiency, to assess the value of communicative language teaching practices, and to help learners develop strategies to handle misunderstandings and other communication problems. Scope of the Study Due to limited time and experience, this study just focuses on verbal communication. Other factors such as non-linguistic factors (facial expression, gestures, eye contact, etc.), paralinguistic factors (intonation, pause, speed of speech, etc.) will not be taken into account. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Cross - Cultural Communication 2. Definition of Culture Today, definitions of culture are multiple and diverse; however, in this paper, culture is defined and classified for the purpose of the study related to communication. Therefore, out of the many possible definitions examined, the following definition guides this study: “culture is a set of shared and enduring meaning, values, and beliefs that characterize national, ethnic, or other groups and orient their behavior” (Mulholland 1991). Definition of Communication Communication can be defined as “the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non verbal symbols, oral and written/visual modes, and production and comprehension processes” (Canale, 1983, p.
It is a form of social interaction and involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message. Definition of Cross - Cultural Communication According to Clarke and Sanchez, the term ¨cross-cultural¨ implies interaction with persons of different cultural, ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious, age and class backgrounds. ¨Cross-cultural communication¨ is a process of exchanging, negotiating, and mediating one's cultural differences through language, non-verbal gestures, and space relationships. It is also the process by which people express their openness to an intercultural experience (Clarke and Sanchez, 2001).
Kramsch defined cross - culture as “the meeting of two cultures or languages across the political boundaries of nation states. 81) Thus, cross - cultural communication is the exchange and negotiation between individuals who come from different cultural background. Normally, people know how to behave appropriately within their own culture and society, but when they move from country to country, this social etiquette changes. For instance, it is quite usual for Vietnamese people to greet each other by saying “where are you going?” Such utterance may be perceived as annoying curiosity by native English speakers because for most Western cultures the individuals and personal privacy come first.
For Asian cultures, nevertheless the emphasis is on promoting group harmony. Speech Act Theory 2. Definitions of Speech Acts 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The concept of speech acts was first defined by Austin (1975). He did not use the term speech act, but “performative sentence” or “performative utterance,” which indicated that “the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action” (p.
The term itself was first used by Searle (1969) who claimed that “talking is performing acts according to rules” (p. 22), and that “speech acts […] are the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication” (p. However, Back and Harnish (1979) believed that there is more to a speech act than this. In their view, speech acts are a complex combination between utterances, locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.
Thus, the speech act schema, or SAS, is as follows, where e is an expression, S the speaker, and H the hearer: “In uttering e [utterance act], S says something to H [locutionary act]; in saying something to H, S does something [illocutionary act]; and by doing something, S affects H [perlocutionary act]” (Bach & Harnish, 1979, p. Wierzbicka (1991) claimed that most of the early definitions of speech acts are ethnocentric, and that thus they fail to take into consideration what she believed is one of the most important characteristics of speech acts, namely cultural specificity. She says that, cultural values and characteristics such as indirectness, objectivism, courtesy, and cordiality are reflected in the way speakers produce speech acts. This multitude of definitions also leads to a multitude of taxonomies.
This study deals with the most important classifications of speech acts in the following section.