THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ MINH HẠNH LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF VERBAL REPAIRS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CONVERSATIONS DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES Da Nang, 2021 luan an THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ MINH HẠNH LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF VERBAL REPAIRS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CONVERSATIONS Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Code: 9.01 DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES SUPERVISOR: Assoc. NGUYỄN THỊ QUỲNH HOA Da Nang, 2021 luan an i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Table of Contents. i List of Abbreviations. Aims and Objectives.
Aims of the Study. Objectives of the Study. Scope of the Study. Significance of the Study.
Theoretical Significance of the Study. Practical Significance of the Study. Structure of the Thesis. 8 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.
Definitions of Terms. Speech Act of Repair. Linguistic Features of Verbal Repairs. Previous Studies Related to the Study.
44 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3. 47 luan an ii 3. Data Collection Method. Data Analysis Method.
Data Coding Method. Reliability and Validity. 58 CHAPTER 4: PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF VERBAL REPAIRS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TELEVISION FILM CONVERSATIONS 4. Pragmatic Features of Verbal Self-Repairs.
Pragmatic Features of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs. Pragmatic Features of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs. Similarities and Differences. Pragmatic Features of Verbal Other-Repairs.
Pragmatic Features of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs. Pragmatic Features of Verbal Other-Repair in VFCs. Similarities and Differences. 91 CHAPTER 5: SEMANTIC FEATURES OF VERBAL REPAIRS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TELEVISION FILM CONVERSATIONS 5.
Semantic Features of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs in Films. Semantic Features of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs in Films. 109 luan an iii 5. Similarities and Differences.
Semantic Features of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs. Semantic Features of Verbal Other-Repair in VFCs. Similarities and Differences. 152 CHAPTER 6: SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF VERBAL REPAIRS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TELEVISION FILM CONVERSATIONS 6.
Syntactic Features of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs. Self-Repair initiated after a Nominal Group. Self-Repair initiated after a Clause. Self-Repair initiated after a Verbal Group.
Self-Repair initiated after a Prepositional Phrase. Syntactic Features of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs. Self-Repair initiated after a Nominal Group. Self-Repair initiated after a Verbal Group.
Self-Repair initiated after a Prepositional Phrase. Self-Repair initiated after a Clause. 176 luan an iv 6. Similarities and Differences.
Syntactic Features of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs. Other-Repair initiated after a Clause. Other-Repair initiated after a Nominal Group. Other-Repair initiated after a Verbal Group.
Other-Repair initiated after a Prepositional Phrase. Other-Repair initiated after the Adjective Group. Syntactic Features of Verbal Other-Repair in VFCs. Other-Repair initiated after a Clause.
Other-Repair initiated after a Nominal Group. Other-Repair initiated after a Verbal Group. Other-repair initiated after an Adjective group. Similarities and Differences.
Limitations of the Study. Suggestions for Further Research. 229 luan an v ABBREVIATIONS Adj: Adjective Adj P: Adjective phrase Adv: Adverb Adv P: Adverbial phrase LFs: Linguistic Features ms: minutes N: Noun NG: Nominal Group P: Preposition PP: Prepositional phrase EFCs: English Film Conversations VFCs: Vietnamese Film Conversations RECs: Repairs in English Conversations RVCs: Repairs in Vietnamese Conversations S: Speaker Ss: Speakers S1: the second speaker S1s: the second speakers V: Verb VG: Verbal Group luan an vi LISTS OF TABLES Table 3.1: Number of conversations containing Repairs .1: Pragmatic Functions of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs .2: Pragmatic Functions of Representatives and Expressives of Verbal Self- Repair in EFCs………………………………………………………………………54 Table 4.3: Pragmatic Functions of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs .4: Pragmatic Functions of Representatives and Expressives of Verbal Self- Repair in VFCs………………………………………………………………………61 Table 4.5: Pragmatic Functions of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs…………….6: Pragmatic Functions of Representatives and Expressives of Verbal Other- Repair in EFCs .7: Pragmatic Functions of Verbal Other-Repair in VFCs .8: Pragmatic Functions of Representatives and Expressives of Verbal Other- Repair in VFCs .1: Semantic Processes Of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs .2: Parts of Experiential Meaning of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs.3: Semantic Processes of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs .4: Parts of Experiential Meaning of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs .5: Semantic Processes of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs .6: Parts of Experiential Meaning of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs.7: Semantic Processes of Verbal Other-Repair in VFCs.8: Parts of Experiential Meaning of Verbal Other-Repair in VFCs.1: Syntactic Features Of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs.2: Syntactic Structures Of Verbal Self-Repair in EFCs.3: Syntactic Features Of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs.4: Syntactic Structures Of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs.5: Syntactic Features Of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs.6: Syntactic Structures Of Verbal Other-Repair in EFCs.7: Syntactic Features Of Verbal Other-Repair in VFCs. 216 luan an vii Table 6.8: Syntactic Structures Of Verbal Self-Repair in VFCs.
217 LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 3.1: Steps for searching and downloading the subtitle of a film .2: The software VLC media player .3: Pragmatic features of verbal repairs from Excel 2010 .4: Types of verbal repairs and their pragmatic functions from Excel 2010.5: The Analytical Framework of the study. 47 luan an 1 ABSTRACT The study investigated linguistic features of verbal repairs in English and Vietnamese Conversations. The type of this research is qualitative, quantitative, deductive, descriptive and contrastive research. This study used 372 daily conversations from 23 English television films and 385 daily conversations from 39 Vietnamese television films to analyze the pragmatic, semantic and syntactic features of verbal repairs.
The research used the theory of conversation analysis and repair of Schegloff et al. (1977)In addition, the cooperative principles of Grice (1975), classification of illocutionary act of Searle (1969) were used to find out the pragmatic features. Semantic and syntactic features of verbal repairs were analyzed on the basis of the viewpoints of functional grammar by Halliday (1994) and then they were concretized by Downing (2015). Some aspects such as the frequencies of the use of the repairs, the functions of the repairs, the violation of Grice’s maxims, the experiential meanings of the repairs, the techniques of the repairs were to be compared.
The results revealed that for pragmatic features: English speakers used self and other-repair for the functions of representatives whereas Vietnamese speakers used self and other-repair for the functions of expressives. The findings showed that English speakers violated the maxim of cooperative principle of Grice (1975) because either they did not provide enough information or their information not clear. Vietnamese speakers used self and other-repairs for their own communicative purposes. For semantic features, the study showed that S and S1 in the extracts of English and Vietnamese film conversations repaired the experiential meanings of 5 processes: material, mental, relational, verbal and existential processes in Downing (2015)’s classification.
For syntactic features, the findings revealed that S and S1 in the extracts of English and Vietnamese film conversations used the techniques such as recycling, replacing, inserting, adding to repair after a noun, verb, preposition, adjective and clause. luan an 2 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Conversation – verbal communication between people - is indispensable in our daily life. In the social relationships or in common communication, people need to talk to exchange information, establish and maintain social relationship, discuss together to find out the solutions to professional issues and even other problems in their daily lives.
Liddicoat (2007) states that conversation is one of the ways people can socialize, develop and sustain each other’s relationship. For that reason, delivering information smoothly is really important for achieving its goal. Although mutual understanding is the goal and the expected state of affairs in conversation, interlocutors sometimes have difficulty in interpreting the other speaker’s turn, or they may interpret their turns differently from what they actually meant. To deal with such problematic cases - where some troubles in speaking, hearing, or understanding the talk occur - repair organisation is needed.
Repair is a mechanism to achieve clarification, to re-establish mutual intelligibility after some perceived trouble. The interlocutors do not have smooth conversations because the obstructions appear in the middle of their conversations. According to Schegloff (cited in Cho, 2008), these obstructions can be any factor in the conversation. It can be a grammatically correct form or a pragmatically appropriate expression.
These obstructions make the interlocutors revise a part or the whole of their utterance. Repair is a term that refers to how people deal with the difficulty that appears in the middle of the conversation. Conversations in films are also talks about issues in the daily life between people. The conversational settings are selected and written by the scriptwriters.
Although film scripts are not naturally occurring conversations and are therefore not what people actually do in real life conversations, their purposes are the same as the ones in natural conversations in every day life, as Dose (2013) states “Speakers use language for a wide range of communicative purpose: in addition to conveying luan an 3 information, speakers express opinions, feelings, and attitudes”. Therefore, conversational situations in films also contain obstructions which make conversations not so smooth as do conversations in daily life. Repairing the trouble sources causing communication breakdown was done to help characters in films obtain their communicative purposes, as in the following examples.1) S: It’ll only be temporary, okay? S1: What’s temporary? S: Temporary means just for a little bit of time.1), S was explaining to the guard in the flat about S’s letting her boyfriend to her room. S knew the regulation of the flat, but S supposed that letting her boyfriend in the room was “temporary”.
The guard asked for explaining the meaning of the word temporary, so S made a repair by explaining that permitting her boyfriend to come in her room happened for a short period of time. S’s repair helped S avoid the misunderstanding that could cause the communication breakdown.2) S: Bác ơi cháu báo tin mừng cho Bác. S1: Tin mừng à? Tin mừng gì thế? S: Đối thủ cạnh tranh của chúng cháu đã ngừng cạnh tranh, không chỉ có thế họ còn quay lại giúp chúng cháu, thế có đáng mừng không Bác. S1: Thế mừng quá còn gì nữa.2), S1 did not know which happy news S was mentioning, S1 asked S to give more information for S’s utterance.
S repaired the utterance by giving some more detailed information of happy news (Đối thủ cạnh tranh của chúng cháu đã ngừng cạnh tranh, không chỉ có thế họ còn quay lại giúp chúng cháu). S’s repair helped S1 understand more and their conversation became more interesting. The example shows that repairs can perform many other pragmatic functions than just preventing communication breakdowns. A communication breakdown is originated from trouble source in a conversation.
It occurs when a message is not properly carried among participants and as a result, the conversation is blocked. According to Schegloff et al. (1977), repair sequences consist, minimally, of the repairable and the repair. The repairable is luan an 4 a linguistic unit which contains the trouble source and which is being repaired, and the repair is the turn in which the problematic element is replaced with another.
"Trouble source" refers to any elements in a conversation which cause communication breakdown to the participants. It could be placed anywhere during conversational interaction and any element could be repaired by participants in conversation. In daily communicative conversations and in conversations in films, the interlocutors can face communication breakdowns. Therefore, they have to use strategies to repair the trouble sources or ask for repair so that they can have effective communication.
Schegloff et al. (1977) were the first researchers of linguistics who mentioned the term of repair and presented strategies of repair often used to overcome the trouble sources causing communication breakdowns.3 ) Ken: Sure enough ten minutes later the bell r - the doorbell rang.