VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATES STUDIES ----------- NGUYỄN THỊ THANH VÂN A STUDY ON POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN NEGOTIATING CONVERSATIONS IN MARKET LEADER “NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ ĐƯỢC SỬ DỤNG TRONG CÁC BÀI HỘI THOẠI ĐÀM PHÁN CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH MARKET LEADER” (PRE INTERMEDIATE BUSINESS ENGLISH – NEW EDITION) M. THESIS (COURSE WORK) Field : English Linguistics Code : 60 22 15 HA NOI – 2009 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATES STUDIES ----------- NGUYỄN THỊ THANH VÂN M. THESIS (COURSE WORK) A STUDY ON POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN NEGOTIATING CONVERSATIONS IN “MARKET LEADER” “NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ ĐƯỢC SỬ DỤNG TRONG CÁC BÀI HỘI THOẠI ĐÀM PHÁN CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH MARKET LEADER” (PRE INTERMEDIATE BUSINESS ENGLISH – NEW EDITION) Field : English Linguistics Code : 60 22 15 Course : 15D Supervisor: Assoc. NGUYỄN QUANG (PH.D) HA NOI – 2009 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Astract Acknowledgements Abbreviations Part 1: Introduction 1.
Aims of the study……………………………………………………………………….Scope of the study………………………………………………………………………. Design of the study………………………………………………………………………. 2 Part 2: Development Chapter1: Theoretical background……………………………………………………….1 What speech acts? …………………………………………………………………….2 Direct speech acts……………………………………………………………………… 5 1.3 Indirect speech acts…………………………………………………………………… 6 1.1 Face and politeness………………………………………….1 What positive politeness?. Positive politeness strategies……………………………………………………….1 What negative politeness?.
Negative politeness strategies……………………………………………………. 15 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.leader Chapter 2: Politeness strategies in negotiating conversations in Market Leader (new edition) – Pre Intermediate Business English 2. Negotiating conversations in the coursebook………………………………………. Politeness strategies in negotiating conversations ………………………………….
The frequency of negative politeness and positive politeness strategies used in the negotiating conversations……………………………………………. Balance of positive and negative politeness strategies used in negotiating conversations……………………………………………………………………………… 21 2.1 Positive politeness strategies in negotiating conversations ………………….2 Negative politeness strategies in negotiating conversations ……………………. 26 Chapter 3: Implications for teaching politeness strategies to HUBT second-year students. Preparation for training politeness strategies………………………………………….
Preparation for students…………………………………………………………. Training politeness strategies for the HUBT second - year students……………. Politeness strategy-awareness training……………………………………………… 36 3. One-time politeness strategy training…………………………………………….
Long-term politeness strategy training………………………………………….Suggestions for futher study…………………………………………………………… 40 References TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.leader PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale: It has been convincingly proved and widely accepted nowadays that an emphasis on language as a communication system is really necessary in the age of globalization. Not only does it help to uncover principles underlying social interactions, but it also enables us to gain an access to ways of thinking, belief systems, and world views of people from various cultural backgrounds. Investigating issues concerning cross-cultural communication is especially momentous at present when national boundaries are becoming less visible, more and more people are engaged in intercultural communication.
Understanding social conventions and paying attention to such concepts as politeness and face will certainly enable us to better comprehend the different ways of speaking by people from different cultures, thus helping to eliminate ethnic stereotypes and misunderstandings. Knowledge of Anglophone cultures is obviously an important key for Vietnamese students to succeed in learning English because second language learning is second culture learning. In order to acquire the second language - English, it is necessary to learn not only linguistic knowledge and interaction skills but also knowledge of the target culture. Cultural factors are included in the course designs in universities and schools today.
When understanding the cultural factors, students have chances to expose themselves more comfortably and confidently to native speaking environments. Normally, Vietnamese students tend to employ English based on their own cultural experience and thus, causing misinterpretations in communication. Hence, to communicate well across cultures the students are well advised to be aware of their source culture as well as the target culture, especially hidden parts of the latter including preferences in behaviour in everyday conversations. Politeness really plays an important part in all social interactions.
The author of this study takes it as her goal to investigate positive and negative politeness strategies in negotiating conversations of the course book “Market Leader – Pre intermediate” by David Cotton, David Falvey and Simon Kent so as to improve the teaching of communication in English to the second year students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (HUBT). -1- TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Aims of the study The study aims at - Identifying and analyzing positive and negative politeness strategies in the negotiating conversations of “Market Leader – Pre intermediate". - Offering implications for teaching positive and negative politeness strategies in a more effective way with cross - cultural activities and exercises.
Scope of the study This study focuses on the positive and negative politeness strategies found in conversational negotiating activities of "Market Leader – Pre intermediate”. It is only intended for HUBT second year students. Methodology The major method employed is quantitative with due reference to qualitative method as this study is mainly about the practical aspects of cross-cultural communication. All the considerations and conclusions are based largely on analysis and reference.
The main approaches include: - Reference to publications - Discussion with supervisor - Discussion with colleagues - Discussion with students - Personal observations 5. Design of the study The study is divided into three parts: Part 1: Introduction presents the rationale, aims of the study, scope of the study, methodology and design of the study. Part II: Development consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 provides the theoretical background on speech acts and politeness strategies.
Chapter 2 analyzes positive and negative politeness strategies found in the negotiating activities of "Market Leader – Pre intermediate" in terms of the frequency of occurrences. Chapter 3 offers some implications for learning and teaching politeness strategies to HUBT second year students. Part III: Conclusion summarizes the main findings, pointing out the limitations of the research and giving suggestions for further study. -2- TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.leader PART II: DEVELPOMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.
What speech acts (SA)? According to Searle (1975), speaking a language is performing speech acts, such as making statements, giving commands, asking questions or making promises. Searle states that “all linguistic communication involves linguistic (speech) acts. In other words, speech acts are the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication” (1976, 16). They are not mere artificial linguistic constructs as it may seem, their understanding together with the acquaintance of context in which they are performed are often essential for decoding the whole utterance and its proper meaning.
The term “speech act” was first introduced by Austin (1962). He also comes up with a new category of utterances – the performatives. Performatives are historically the first to be examined within the theory of speech acts. Austin (1962) defines a performative as an utterance which contains a special type of verb (a performative verb) by force of which it performs an action.
In other words, in using a performative, a person is not just saying something but is actually doing something (Wardhaugh, 1992: 283). Austin (1962) further states that a performative, unlike a constative, cannot be true or false (it can only be felicitous or infelicitous) and that it does not describe, report or constate anything. According to Austin (1962), a speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication. He points out that in uttering a sentence we can do things as well as say things.
In other words, the peculiar thing about the sentences is that “they are not used just to say things, i. describe states of affairs, but rather actively to do things.” For instance, the sentence “You have a wonderful smile” is more than mere description and statement; it does things on its own. This means that it can function depending on contexts as praise, or even asking for money in a certain situation. It is clear that speaking a language is performing speech acts.
Thus, “all utterances, in addition to meaning whatever they mean, perform specific action (or do things) through having specific forces” (Levinson, Stephen C. Levinson (1983:236) believes that three kinds of acts are simultaneously performed in making an utterance: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. -3- TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.leader First, every utterance is represented by a sentence with a grammatical structure and a linguistic meaning, this is called locution. Second, the speaker has some intention in making an utterance, and what they intend to accomplish is called illocution.
A third component of a speech act is the effect of the act on the hearer, which is called perlocutionary act. * Locution: the actual form of the utterance. To perform a locutionary act is to produce an utterance with a particular form and more or less determine the meaning according to the rules of a given language. Locutionary acts are divided into three sub-types, and these acts are simultaneous: Phonic act: Producing an utterance in the phonic medium of sound Phatic act: constructing a particular sentence in a particular language Rhetic act: contextualizing a sentence.
* Illocution: the communicative force of the utterance, or the intended message of the speaker. Illocutionary act is some kind of intended message that the speaker assigns to his utterance. There are different kinds of illocutionary force, because we use language for a variety of purposes: to make promises, to threaten, to demand, etc. What matters in performing an act is whether the act meets certain conditions, known as felicity and appropriateness.
Four types of felicity conditions are: + Propositional content condition: expresses the content of the act. + Preparatory condition: expresses the contextual background required for the act. + Sincerity condition: requires the speaker to be sincere. + Essential condition: the speaker intends the utterance to have a certain force.
* Perlocution: The communicative effect of the utterance or the hearer's interpretation of what the speaker says. Perlocutionary act is the communicative effect of the utterance. Sharing with Levinson's opinion on SA classification, Searl (1979:240) brings classificatory order to illocutionary acts. SA can be grouped into five broad classes of illocutionary points: + Declaratives - the speaker brings about some state of affairs by virtue of the utterance -4- TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
The performance of the act brings about a change in the world. This class includes endorse, resign, nominate, appoint etc. + Assertives- the speaker believes that the proposition expressed represents actual states of affair and has grounds for so doing. This class includes accuse, complain, assert, etc.
+Expressives - the speaker expresses some psychological state, feelings or attitudes about a given state of affairs. This class includes apologize, compliment, deplore, praise, etc. + Directives - the speaker attempts to get the hearer to carry out a future course of action. This class includes request, question, order, command, etc.
+ Commissives - the speaker becomes committed to doing something at some point in the future. This class includes promise, vow, pledge, guarantee, etc. Direct speech acts The classification of speech acts into direct and indirect speech acts can be made on the basis of structure. Direct speech acts perform their function in a direct and literal manner, or when intended meaning is the same as its literal meaning, we have direct speech acts.
A direct speech act can be performed by using sentences literally or using performative verb. Considering these examples: (a) “I warn you not to do that” (b) “I hereby advise you to read the test carefully”. The example (a) is a direct warning and the example (b) is a direct advice. According to Yule, when there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech act (1996: 55).
There are basic types of direct speech acts correspond a special syntax. Speech Act Structure Sentence Function Assertion Declarative Conveys information; is true or false. Question Interrogative Elicits information Order and Request Imperative Causes others to behave in certain ways Considering the following example in case the speaker wants the addressee not to stand in front of television. -5- TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.