iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i Acknowledgements ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ii Abstract ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iii Table of contents -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iv List of abbreviations ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- vii List of tables -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- viii List of figures ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ix INTRODUCTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study ----------------------------------------- 1 2. Aims of the study ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 3. Scope of the study ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 5.
Significance of the study -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 7. Organization of the study-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW -------------------------------------------------------- 5 1. SPEECH ACT THEORY ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 1. Austin’s speech act theory ------------------------------------------------------------- 5 1.
Searle’s speech act theory ------------------------------------------------------------- 6 1. POLITENESS AND FACE THEORY ------------------------------------------------------- 8 1. Notion of politeness and face --------------------------------------------------------- 8 1. Conversational-maxim view on politeness ------------------------------------------ 8 1.
Grice’s cooperative principle ------------------------------------------------- 8 1. Leech’s politeness principle -------------------------------------------------- 9 1. Face-management view on politeness ----------------------------------------------- 11 1. Negative and positive face ---------------------------------------------------- 11 1.
Positive and negative politeness --------------------------------------------- 12 1. The definition of compliments -------------------------------------------------------- 13 1. The topics of compliments ------------------------------------------------------------ 13 1. The functions of compliments -------------------------------------------------------- 14 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
GENDER AND LANGUAGE ----------------------------------------------------------------- 17 1. Gender and sex -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 1. Gender-based differences in language use ------------------------------------------ 19 1. Use of silence ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 1.
Explanations for gender-based differences in language use ---------------------- 24 1. GENDER AND POLITENESS ---------------------------------------------------------------- 27 1. Review of the studies on compliments and compliment responses ------------- 29 1. Review of the studies on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 2.
Data collection procedures ------------------------------------------------------------ 37 2. Data analysis procedures -------------------------------------------------------------- 39 2. The differences in compliment behavior between males and females ---------- 39 2. Frequency of compliments---------------------------------------------------- 39 2.
Topics of compliments -------------------------------------------------------- 42 2. Functions of compliments ---------------------------------------------------- 47 2. The differences in compliment responses between males and females --------- 51 2. Discussion of the findings on the differences in compliment behavior between males and females ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 56 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Discussion of the findings on the differences in compliment response between males and females ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 58 CONCLUSION ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61 1. Summary of the findings -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61 2. Limitations of the study --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65 4. Suggestions for further research ------------------------------------------------------------------ 65 REFERENCES --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 67 APPENDIX Compliments and compliment responses in the American comedy TV-series “Ugly Betty” (Episodes 1-10, Season 1) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS CA: Conversation analysis CP: Cooperative principle CR: Compliment response DCT: Discourse Completion Test FSA: Face-saving act FTA: Face-threatening act F: Female M: Male PP: Politeness principle LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com viii LISTS OF TABLES Table 1-1: The five general functions of speech acts (Yule, 1996, p.
55) Table 1-2: Herbert’s CR types (1989) Table 1-3: Functions of tag-questions between women and men (Holmes, 1992) Table 1-4: Functions of tag-questions between women and men (Coates & Cameron, 1989) Table 1-5: Interruptions in cross-sex conversations (Zimmerman & West, 1975) Table 2-1: Female characters Table 2-2: Male characters Table 2-3: The distribution of compliments to someone present and someone absent by gender of complimenter Table 2-4: The number of compliments in the overall episodes Table 2-5: Compliments by gender of participants Table 2-6: Interaction between compliment topic and gender of participants Table 2-7: Compliments on Appearance Table 2-8: Compliments on Possession Table 2-9: Compliments on Performance/ability/skill Table 2-10: Compliments on Personality Table 2-11: Interaction between compliment function and gender of participants Table 2-12: The distribution of compliment responses Table 2-13: Compliment response interaction data Table 2-14: Three broad categories of compliment responses Table 2-15: ACCEPTANCE AGREEMENT responses Table 2-16: APPRECIATION TOKEN responses Table 2-17: AGREEMENT (ACCEPTANCE and NON-ACCEPTANCE) responses Table 2-18: NON-AGREEMENT responses Table 2-19: NO ACKNOWLEDGMENT responses LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ix LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 1: Leech’s indirectness scale (1983, p. 108) Figure 2-1: Interaction between compliment topic and gender of participants Figure 2-2: Interaction between compliment function and gender of participants LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 INTRODUCTION The introduction states the problem and the rationale of the study, together with the aims, scope, methodology, the significance and the organization of the whole paper. Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are set out to work as the guidelines for the whole research. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study An effective language user is competent in not only linguistics but also pragmatics.
As Yule (1996) put it, “nothing in the use of the linguistic forms is inaccurate, but getting the pragmatics wrong might be offensive” (p. To be able to use a target language appropriately in terms of pragmatic competence, language users should employ a variety of speech acts. Complimenting is one of them. Compliments not only express sincere admiration of positive qualities, but they also replace greetings, thanks or apologies, and minimize face-threatening acts (henceforth FTAs), such as criticism, scolding, or requests (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Holmes, 1988a; Wolfson, 1983, 1989).
Complimenting is a tool of establishing friendship that creates ties of solidarity in American culture. It is also an important social strategy that functions as an opener for a conversation, allowing meaningful social interactions to follow. Americans pay compliments so frequently that neglecting to do so can even be interpreted as a sign of disapproval (Manes, 1983; Wolfson, 1989; Wolfson & Manes, 1980) and a wrong use of compliments may cause embarrassment and offense (Dunham, 1992; Holmes & Brown, 1987). Each culture requires various kinds of speech act behavior.
Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) found that “culturally colored interactional styles create culturally determined expectations and interpretative strategies, and can lead to breakdowns in intercultural and interethnic communication” (p. In other words, when people from different cultures interact, breakdowns in communication may happen due to signaling different speech act strategies that reflect the culture‟s distinctive interactional style. Complimenting is a particularly suitable speech act to investigate because it acts as a window through which we can view what is valued in a particular culture. Thus, it is LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 essential for Vietnamese learners of English to know how to give appropriate compliments and responses in English.
Complimenting is inevitably affected by social factors including gender. According to Tannen (1990), gender differences are parallel to cross-cultural differences. Therefore, it is worthwhile to study the interactions between men and women, men and men, or women and women exchanging compliments and responses. All those reasons stimulate the researcher to conduct a study on gender-based differences in compliments and compliment responses in English conversations through the American Comedy TV-series “Ugly Betty”.
The people in the TV series are not real people, but the actors are chosen to match the real ones in daily life. What can be assumed is that the data would bare resemblance to real life language. Hopefully, the study will make a contribution to the field which it is envisioned and fill the gaps in previous research. Aims of the study First of all, the study sets out to investigate the gender-based differences in compliment behavior including the frequency of compliments, compliment topics and the functions of compliments.
Secondly, the differences between males and females in compliments response strategies are explored. The findings will pave the way for several pedagogical and intercultural communication implications. Research questions The research seeks the answers to the following research questions: Research question 1: What are the differences in compliment behavior between males and females? Research question 2: What are the differences in compliment responses between males and females? 4. Scope of the study There are four seasons in this TV-series with the total of 85 episodes.
However, due to the size and limitation of a preliminary research, the dialogues in the episodes one to ten in the LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 first season are used with the development of the story. Every episode takes about 40 minutes. Totally, this study will analyze ten episodes of around 400 minutes. The compliments among 18 characters balanced in gender, 9 females and 9 males, are chosen.
Some compliments are excluded from the present study: compliments to a place or an object that does not belong to interactants, compliments to speakers themselves or to a group of people, compliments from a group to a particular thing or a special person. Furthermore, a compliment may be sincere or insincere. Mills (2003) stated: The hearer might consider that the speaker is being insincere and is only complimenting because he/she wants something – i. that it is serving some longer term goal; or it might be interpreted as suggesting that the person does not look good at all, but the speaker is being kind.
220) Also, compliments can have an ironic meaning (Holmes, 1995, p. For instance, if the interlocutors are enemies, the compliments between them have ironic meanings. Within the scope of an M. thesis, only sincere compliments are analyzed.
Methodology Quantitative and qualitative methods are both used in this paper with priorities given to the quantitative one. In other words, all the conclusions and considerations are based on the analysis of the empirical studies and statistics processed on Stata 10, a software program commonly used in social sciences. In addition, such methods as descriptive, analytic, comparative and contrastive are also utilized to describe and analyze, to compare and contrast the database so as to find out gender-based differences in compliments‟ frequency, topics and functions and types of compliment response strategies. Significance of the study The present study is conducted to find out the influences of gender on compliment behavior and compliment response strategies in English.
It will add to the research on compliments and second language acquisition. Regarding researchers who share the same interest in the topic, they could rely on this paper to get useful information for their future studies. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 Besides, the study could help Vietnamese learners of English to be aware of sociolinguistic aspects of English and thus to improve their pragmatic competence. As for teachers of English, the findings from this paper may have crucial pedagogical implications for practice of teaching English as a foreign language.
Organization of the study After the Introduction, the rest of the paper includes the following parts: Chapter 1 (Literature Review) provides the background of the study including the definitions of key concepts and the discussions of related studies. Chapter 2 (The study) describes the procedures to conduct the research, presents, analyzes the results and discusses the findings the researcher obtained according to the two research questions. Conclusion summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, provides some implications and points out the limitations of the research as well as proposes several suggestions for further studies. Following this part are References and Appendix.
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, theoretical preliminaries and fundamental concepts related to the research topic are reviewed. Moreover, the overview of related studies is also taken into consideration. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Speech act theory 1.
Austin’s speech act theory Austin, with a pivotal work in the field of linguistics How to Do Things with Words (1962), was one of the first modern scholars recognizing that words are in themselves actions. According to Austin, in saying something the speaker does something (1962). Austin stated that there are three related acts in the action of performing an utterance: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. Locutionary act is the basic act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression.
The second dimension, the illocutionary act, is performed by uttering some words, such as complimenting, commanding, offering, promising, threatening, thanking, etc. In other words, it is the communicative force of an utterance. The third part is the perlocutionary act, which is the actual result of the locution. The perlocution is defined by the hearer‟s reaction.