VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THÚY HÒA A STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE CONVERSATIONS OF THE COURSE BOOK “INSIDE OUT” (PRE-INTERMEDIATE) Nghiên cứu các chiến lược lịch sự trong các bài hội thoại của giáo trình “Inside Out” (Pre-intermediate) M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 HA NOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THÚY HÒA A STUDY OF POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN THE CONVERSATIONS OF THE COURSE BOOK “INSIDE OUT” (PRE-INTERMEDIATE) Nghiên cứu các chiến lược lịch sự trong các bài hội thoại của giáo trình “Inside Out” (Pre-intermediate) M. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10 SUPERVISOR: Prof. NGUYỄN QUANG, Ph.D HA NOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page: Part 1.
Aims of the study. 1 III Scope of the study. Design of the study. Culture and Communication.
Face and Politeness .1 Positive Politeness defined .2 Positive Politeness strategies .1 Negative politeness defined .2 Negative politeness strategies. Positive and negative politeness strategies found in the conversational activities of the coursebook Inside Out (pre- intermediate). Overview of politeness strategies in “Inside Out” (Pre-intermediate). Frequency of positive, negative and mixed politeness strategies used in “Inside Out” (Pre-intermediate).
Balance of positive, negative and mixed politeness strategies. Analysis of positive politeness strategies. Analysis of negative politeness strategies …………………………………. Positive and negative politeness strategies and S-H relationships.
25 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Positive politeness strategies and S-H relationships. Negative politeness strategies and S-H relationships. Implications for English Language Teaching.
Implications for teaching politeness strategies. Suggestions for further research. III LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Rationale Linguists and anthropologists have long recognized that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken.
Linguistic competence alone is not enough for learners of a language to become competent in that language (Krasner, 1999). Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. Language learners should know that behaviors and intonational patterns that are appropriate to their own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target speech community. Learners have to understand that in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior.
Hence, to be successful in communicating in the target language, learners must be aware of their own culture and the culture of the target speech community. Especially, they must understand the hidden and very important parts of the target culture including the politeness strategies used in everyday conversations. Inside Out is an English coursebook written by Sue Kay, Vaughan Jones and Philip Kerr. This coursebook is employed at the Faculty of Information Technology (Thai Nguyen University) where the thesis author works as a teacher of English.
Fully aware of the benefit of understanding politeness strategies, the author conducts an investigation into the performance of positive and negative politeness strategies in conversational activities of the course book Inside Out (Pre-Intermediate) with the hope of improving the teaching of communicative English. Aims of the study The aims of the study are: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - To study the performance of positive and negative politeness strategies under the pressure of S-H role relationships in the conversational activities of the coursebook Inside Out (Pre-Intermediate). - To provide suggestions for more effective teaching and learning of positive and negative politeness strategies. - To adapt and design some cross-cultural activities to help students avoid misinterpretations and misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication.
Scope of the study This study focuses on the positive and negative politeness strategies in conversational activities of the coursebook Inside Out (Pre-Intermediate) which, for a long time, has been in use at the author‟s university. The study also highlights S-H role relationships. Other components of communication (eg., purpose, setting, time availability …), important though they obviously are, are beyond the scope of this study. Methodology: The major method employed in this study is the quantitative method with due reference to the qualitative method since this study sets priority on the practical aspects of cross- cultural communication.
All considerations and conclusions are largely based on data analysis. For the theory to be provided, the data to be collected and analyzed, and the findings to be discovered, the following approaches are resorted to: - Critical reading of publications. - Discussion with supervisor. - Discussion with colleagues.
- Discussion with students. Design of the study This study includes the following three parts: Part 1 is the introduction which presents the rationale, aims of the study, scope of the study and methodology. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Part 2 is the development that consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the theoretical background of culture and communication, communicative competence, face and politeness, positive politeness and negative politeness strategies.
Chapter 2 analyzes the performance of politeness strategies in the conversational activities of the coursebook (Book 2 - Pre-Intermediate) in terms of the performance and frequency of positive and negative politeness strategies with S-H role relationships in view. Chapter 3 offers implications for English language teaching and supplementary activities for cross-cultural awareness. Part 3 is the conclusion in which the author summarizes the study, raising limitations and offering suggestions for further research. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Culture and Communication The term “culture” refers to the complex collection of knowledge, folklore, language, rules, rituals, habits, lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, and customs that link and give a common identity to a particular group of people at a specific point in time. According to Phillip K. Bock, culture is regarded “in its broadest sense, as what makes you a stranger when you are away from home. It includes all those beliefs and expectations about how people should speak and act, which have become a kind of second nature to one as a result of social learning.
When you are with members of a group who share your culture, you do not have to think about it, for you are all viewing the world in pretty much the same way and you all know, in general terms, what to expect of one another” (cited from Nguyen Thi Tuyet, 2005:3). And “culture enables us to communicate with each other since it is a shared language background (e., national, religious) resulting from a common language and communicative style, customs, beliefs, attitudes, values” (Levine & Adelman, cited from Nguyen Quang, 1998:3) The relationship between communication and culture is a very complex and intimate one. First, cultures are created through communication; that is, communication is the means of human interaction through which cultural characteristics - whether customs, roles, rules, rituals, laws, or other patterns - are created and shared. It is not so much that individuals set out to create a culture when they interact in relationships, groups, organizations, or societies, but rather that cultures are a natural by-product of social interaction.
In a sense, cultures are the “residue” of social communication. Without communication and communicative media, it would be impossible to preserve and pass along cultural characteristics from one place and time to another. Culture is created, shaped, transmitted, and learned through communication. The reverse is also the case; that is, communicative practices are largely created, shaped, and transmitted by culture.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com This is true with any culture; communication shapes culture, and culture shapes communication. Hence, learning to communicate in one new language ought to assist with learning a new culture. Communicative Competence (CC) Hymes‟s original idea is that speakers of a language have to have more than grammatical competence in order to be able to communicate effectively in a language; they also need to know how language is used by members of a speech community to accomplish their purposes. CC is the knowledge and skills which enable people to use a language effectively and their ability to actually use this knowledge for communication (Hymes, 1970).
Hymes distinguishes four sectors of CC: knowledge of what is possible, feasible, appropriate and actually done. In Saville – Troike‟s opinion, in order to acquire CC, learners needs three components: linguistic knowledge, interactive skills and cultural knowledge. Linguistic knowledge includes verbal factors, nonverbal factors, and stereotypes in specific speech events, possible continuation of variables and the meaning of variables in specific context. Interactive skills include awareness of predominant features in context; choice and interpretation of forms, suitable to specific contexts, roles and relations; norms in communication and interpretation; communicative strategies to gain oriented targets.
And cultural knowledge includes social structures, values and attitudes, and acculturalization. According to Nguyen Quang (1998:13), the components of linguistic knowledge and interactive skills, almost always convey awareness of cultural knowledge. Thus, it is assumed that these three factors in CC, particularly in cross-cultural speech, overlap and affect one another. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com That is the reason why “when we teach a language like English to speakers who already know another language, we must be aware that we have to teach more than sounds, words and grammatical structures” (Wardhaugh, cited from Nguyen Thi Tuyet, 2005:5).
Face and politeness I. Face defined When people are involved in conversations, they individually consider certain variables, whether consciously or sub-consciously, that help them determine the form that their speech will take. Goffman (1955) calls these variables “face”, and defines it as “ the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Goffman 1955:213) Brown and Levinson (1987), using Goffman‟s definition of face as a starting point, propose a comprehensive and, according to Brown and Levinson, universal theory of politeness. Face is defined as the public self-image that all rational adult members have when engaged in spoken interactions, and it must be constantly adhered to.
They then divide face into two separate, but related aspects: positive face and negative face. Positive face refers to "the positive self-image that people have and want to be appreciated and approved of by at least some people" (Brown and Levinson, 1987 :61). In other words, positive face is seen as the desire that others like, admire, value or approve of one's wants (material or non-material), or the need to be accepted and liked by others, treated as a member of the group, and to know that one's desires are shared by others(Cutting 2002:45). Brown and Levinson (1987) define negative face as a "basic claim to territories, personal preserves, and right to non-distraction - i.
freedom of action and freedom from imposition". The negative face, therefore, "is reflected in the desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chooses' (Thomas 1995: 169), 'the wants that one's LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com action be unimpeded by others' (Eelen 2001 : 3) and „the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed upon by others‟. In general, participants will co-operate with each other due to the mutual vulnerability of face. However, it is not possible for conversation to flow without a demand or intrusion being made on another person's autonomy.
Certain illocutionary acts are liable to damage or threaten another person's face. Brown and Levinson (1987) define the performance of such utterances as potential face-threatening acts (FTAs). When confronted with the need to perform an FTA, the speaker needs to decide how it should be uttered. Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that the first choice to be made is whether the FTA should be performed on record or off record.