VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies Faculty of post-graduate studies PHẠM THỊ HỒNG LIÊN A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversational Activities of the Coursebook “ New English file” (Intermediate) Nghiên cứu về chiến lược lịch sự trong các bài hội thoại của giáo trình giao tiếp “New English File” (Intermediate) M. MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 ha noi – 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI University of languages and international studies Faculty of post-graduate studies PHẠM THỊ HỒNG LIÊN A Study on Politeness Strategies in the Conversational Activities of the Coursebook “ New English file” (Intermediate) Nghiên cứu về chiến lược lịch sự trong các bài hội thoại của giáo trình giao tiếp “New English File” (Intermediate) M. MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 Supervisor: Assoc. VÕ ĐẠI QUANG, Ph.
ha noi – 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Table of Contents Contents Pages * Acknowledgements i * Abstract iv * List of Abbreviations v * List of tables and figures vi Chapter I: Introduction 1 1. Aims of the Study 1 3. Objectives of the study 1 4. Scope of the study 2 5.
Significance of the study 2 6. Structure of the thesis 2 Chapter II: Development 4 I. Culture and Communication 4 1. Positive Politeness and Positive Politeness Strategies 10 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Negative Politeness and Negative Politeness Strategies 14 1. Data – related issues 20 2. Data types to be collected 21 2. Specific research techniques 21 2.
Techniques for data collection 21 2. Techniques for data analysis 21 2. Steps for data analysis 22 2. Findings and Discussion 24 3.
Occurrence frequency of positive, negative and mixed politeness 23 strategies. Positive politeness strategies in conversational activities in the seven 25 units of the course book “New English File, Intermediate” 3. Negative politeness strategies in conversational activities in the seven 31 units of the course book “New English File, Intermediate” v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Summary 34 Chapter III.
Concluding remarks on objective 1 36 3. Concluding remarks on objective 2 36 3. Concluding remarks on objective 3 37 3. Suggestions for further research 38 * References i * Appendix iv vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of Abbreviations S Speaker H Hearer/ Addressee FTA Face threatening act NP Negative politeness PP Positive Politeness T Track P Page vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of tables and figures Figure 1: Ferrando’s diagram of culture Figure 2: Circumstances determining choice of strategy Figure 3: Strategies to minimize risk of losing face (Nguyen Quang, 2002) Figure 4: Frequency of positive, negative and mixed politeness strategies.
Figure 5: The frequency of positive politeness strategies Figure 6: The frequency of negative politeness strategies Table 1: The statistics of positive and negative and mixed politeness strategies Table 2: The statistics of positive politeness strategies viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Chapter I: Introduction 1. Rationale At the great speed of developing and expanding, English has now become the most powerful language over the world and has been considered “a golden key to every door”. Therefore, using English to communicate is a must for everybody. As a matter of fact, to help learners attain the good command of communication, culture plays an indispensable role.
Nguyen Quang (1998:2) states that, “One cannot master a language without profound awareness of its cultural background and in both verbal and non-verbal communication, culture makes itself strongly felt” or Winstion Brembeck (1997:37) noted that, “To know another language and not his culture is a very good way to make a fluent fool of oneself”. Learners will truly succeed in using English when they must be aware of the relationship between language and culture, especially the hidden part of target culture including politeness strategies used commonly in daily social interaction. For these reasons, the author would like to carry out a small-scale study on investigating the positive and negative politeness strategies in conversational activities of the course book New English File (Intermediate) by Clive Oxenden and Christina Latham- Koeing with a view to improving the teaching and learning of politeness strategies in this course book. Aims of the study The aims of the study are: To raise Vietnamese learner’s awareness of how to use politeness strategies appropriately in order to achieve successful communication.
To put forward some suggestions for the teaching of positive and negative polite strategies to language teachers. Objectives of the study To achieve these aims, the following are set forth as objectives of the research: 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - positive strategies employed in the conversational activities in the specified course book - negative politeness strategies employed in the conversational activities in the specified course book. - possible implications for effective teaching of politeness strategies in verbal communication via English. Scope of the study This thesis is focused on positive and negative politeness strategies in conversational activities of the course book “New English File- Intermediate”.
The investigation is based mainly on the theoretical framework of Brown and Levinson (1987) and Nguyen Quang (2002). Off record politeness strategies, politeness rules and politeness principles are out of the scope of this thesis. Significance of the study Theoretical significance: This study contributes to making explicit the important role of politeness strategies in verbal communication, especially in cross- cultural communication. Practical significance: This study helps gain an insight into the method employable for teaching politeness strategies in the course book “New English File- Intermediate” as well as in adjustment and application of teaching techniques.
Structure of the thesis In addition to the “References” and “Appendix” parts, the thesis consists of three main parts: Chapter I: Introduction This part includes the rationale, aims, objectives, scopes, significance of the study and structure of the thesis. Chapter II: Development 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com This chapter is divided into three parts: I. Literature Review II. Findings and discussions.
Chapter III: Conclusion 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Chapter II: Development I. Culture and Communication The term “culture” has been so far defined by many scholars and linguists. In its simplest meaning, culture refers to a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviorism and material objects that members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another and is transmitted from generation to generation through learning. Culture, in its broad sense, covers all aspects of human life.
However, it must be noted that “the essence of culture is not its artifacts, tools or other tangible culture elements but how the members of the group interpret, use and perceive. Therefore, Ferrando (cited in Nguyen Quang’s Lecture notes) defined that “Culture is everything that people have, think or do as a member of a society.” Ideas, values, attitudes (THINK) Materials object Behavior pattern Culture (HAVE) (DO) Figure 1: Ferrando’s diagram of culture Like culture, there are many definitions of communication with various emphases on different factors. As defined by Hybels and Weaver (2001:5), communication is 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com “any process in which people share information, ideals, and feelings that involve not only the spoken and written words but also language, personal mannerism and style, the surrounding and things that add meaning to a message.” It is understood that communication is a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding. This process requires a vast repertoire of skills in intrapersonal and interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, and evaluating.
And it is clear that without communication, people would stagnate and our society would not exist anymore. As the two terms “culture” and “communication” have been cracked thoroughly, another issue that comes to light is the relationship between them. As Samovar (1981:20) insightfully notes: “Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed or interpreted. Culture is the foundation of communication”.
It is understood that the principles of communication are culturally affected or communication practices are largely created, shaped and transmitted by culture. In contrast, without communication, it would be impossible to preserve and pass along cultural characteristics from one place and time to another. Needless to say, there is an intimate and complex relationship between culture and communication. Hence, to communicate well in one new language, learners ought to assist with learning a new culture.
Communicative Competence Spitzberg (1988) defined communicative competence as "the ability to interact well with others" (p. He explains, "The term 'well' refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness" (p. Communicative competence is measured by determining if, and to what 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com degree, the goals of interaction are achieved. The function of communication is to maximize the achievement of “shared meaning.” Parks (1985: 174) emphasizes three interdependent themes: control, responsibility, and foresight; and argues that to be competent, we must "not only 'know' and 'know how,' we must also 'do' and 'know that we did'”.
He defines communicative competence as "the degree to which individuals perceive they have satisfied their goals in a given social situation without jeopardizing their ability or opportunity to pursue their other subjectively more important goals". This combination of cognitive and behavioral perspectives is consistent with Wiemann and Backlund’s (1980: 188) argument that communication competence is: “The ability of an interactant to choose among available communicative behaviors in order that he (sic) may successfully accomplish his (sic) own interpersonal goals during an encounter while maintaining the face and line of his (sic) fellow interactants within the constraints of the situation.” Other applied linguists, notably, Bachman (1990) and Blum-Kulka and Levenston (1983: 120), have offered additional extensions to communicative competence. Blum-Kulka view communicative competence as consisting of: Awareness of hyponym, antonym, converseness, and other possible systematic links between lexical items, by means of which, the substitution of one lexical item for another can be explained in particular contexts. Ability to avoid using specific lexical items by means of circumlocution and paraphrase.
Ability to recognize degrees of paraphrasic equivalence. According to Saville-Troike (1982: 22) there are three major components of communicative competence as follows: Linguistic knowledge Cultural knowledge Interaction skill 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com This idea emphasizes not only the learner’s ability to produce grammatically correct sentences but also the knowledge of what, when and how to produce these sentences. 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” ( Warhaugh, cited from Nguyen Thi Tuyet, 2005:5). Politeness In daily conversations or social interaction, people tend to choose appropriate ways of using words to fit to the situation or communicating contexts.
It is generally believed that people act in such a way to show respect for the face wants of their conversational partners. The use of language to behave accordingly is called politeness. Linguistically, politeness is defined as “the interactional balance achieved between two needs: the need for pragmatic clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness” (Blum-Kulla, 1987: 131). Meanwhile, in terms of cultural aspect, politeness is viewed as “a fixed concept, as in the idea of “polite social behavior” or “etiquette, within a culture”” (Yule, 1996:60).
In another way, it is also possible to specify a number of different general principles for being polite in social interaction within a particular culture.