VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYEN THI VIET NGA COMMUNICATION IN FAMILY DISPUTES (SURVEYING AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE MOVIES) GIAO TIẾP TRONG TRANH CÃI GIA ĐÌNH (KHẢO SÁT PHIM MỸ VÀ PHIM VIỆT) HANOI 2015 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYEN THI VIET NGA COMMUNICATION IN FAMILY DISPUTES (SURVEYING AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE MOVIES) GIAO TIẾP TRONG TRANH CÃI GIA ĐÌNH (KHẢO SÁT PHIM MỸ VÀ PHIM VIỆT) Field: English Linguistics Code: 62 22 15 01 A Thesis Submitted in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Assoc. Nguyen Van Do Assoc. Vo Dai Quang HANOI 2015 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authority of the thesis submitted entitled COMMUNICATION IN FAMILY DISPUTES: SURVEYING AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE MOVIES In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgment in the text of the thesis. Hanoi- 2015 Nguyen Thi Viet Nga 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my two supervisors, Assoc.
Nguyen Van Do and Assoc. Vo Dai Quang, for their valuable suggestions, guidance and encouragement throughout the course of this work, for their generous way of giving me time and constant willingness to help me with my thesis. My gratefulness also goes to members of my committees at all levels of the research project (Prof. Nguyen Hoa, Prof.
Hoang Van Van, Prof. Nguyen Quang, Assoc. Ngo Huu Hoang, Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan) as they gave insightful comments and suggestions to my thesis.
I am also extremely thankful to Assoc. Le Hung Tien, Former Dean of Faculty of Postgraduate Studies for his knowledgeable suggestions, support, understanding and kindness without which I would not have finished this thesis. I am greatly indebted to my colleagues at ESP Division, Faculty of International Affairs, Academy of Journalism and Communication for their ceaseless support and patience, creating all favourable conditions for me to do the research. Last but not least, I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents, my husband and my two sons who helped me endure many difficult times during the process of this study.
Without their constant love and encouragement, completion of this study would not have been possible. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This thesis aims at yielding insights into the way American and Vietnamese people communicate during their family disputes, to find out similarities and differences between these two cultures in terms of disputing topics, escalation strategies and termination strategies. Based on Hofstede’s (1990, 2001, 2010) theoretical framework of cultural dimensions, specifically Power distance, Individualism- Collectivism, Masculinity- Femininity, the study has identified impact of these dimensions on disputing stages between family members: initiation, escalation and termination. “Dispute” in the thesis has been conceptualized as a dynamic interactional process which inaugurates with “arguable utterance- initial opposition” model, then progresses with mutual oppositions between disputants and ends with certain termination formats.
The thesis puts emphasis on analyzing two pairs of family relationships in American and Vietnamese movies: parent-child, and husband-wife. They, in ages of 16-60, all live in urban areas. Cross-cultural, cross-linguistic and discourse analysis approaches are combined to analyze data of movie dialogues. Data analysis has been implemented on a revised and combined analytical framework suggested by Eisenberg & Garvey (1981), Maynard (1985), Hutchby (1996) and Vuchinich (1987,1990).
From totally 4880 minutes of American movies and 5320 minutes of Vietnamese movies, the author categorized and selected 310 family disputes as samples. Qualitative and quantitative methods are integrated to figure out a panorama of family disputes in two cultures. The thesis has fulfilled the task of exploring the most common disputing topics and strategies that American and Vietnamese family members apply to achieve their goals in each disputing stage. The language used for each strategy and cultural factors that affect strategies’ verbalization formats are also identified.
Hence, the similarities and differences between two languages and two cultures are disclosed. Researching on family disputes provides a more comprehensive view of human 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com communication, which is not only formed by consensus but also confrontation. This thesis’s results, therefore, are beneficial to understand cultures and also have particular merit for cross-cultural studies and foreign language learning. 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.
New contributions and significance of the study. Aims and research questions of the study. Scope of the study. Organization of the study.
5 PART 2 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Family structurally defined. Family functionally defined. Family interactionally defined.
Communication in family. Strategies in communication. Communication and family relationships. Culture and family communication.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Conceptualization of dispute. Related concepts to Dispute. 28 7 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Dispute and family dispute. Concept of dispute. Dispute as one basic process in family communication. Reviewing related studies to disputes.
Disputes among children. Disputes among adults. Disputes among family members. Data selection criteria.
Data collection procedure. Designing a framework for analysis. 58 CHAPTER 3: FAMILY DISPUTE INITIATION STAGE. Recognizing initial opposition.
Strategy of initial opposition. 74 8 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 4: FAMILY DISPUTE ESCALATION STAGE. Denying common interest. Using inappropriate addressing forms.
Combination of escalating strategies. 122 CHAPTER 5: FAMILY DISPUTE TERMINATION STAGE .141 9 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Differences and cultural influences. Review on application of theoretical framework and analytical framework.
Limitations of current study and suggestions for further research. 150 REFERENCES APPENDICES APPENDIX 1. viii 10 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 1: Key terms in defining communication. 12 Figure 2: Pattern of dispute initiation.
52 Figure 3: Revised pattern of family dispute initiation in the present study. 52 Figure 4: Overview of adapted and revised analytical framework. 54 LISTS OF TABLES Table 1: Six cultural dimensions defined by Hofstede (2010). 18 Table 2: Data collection criteria.
48 Table 3: Number of selected extracts in American movies. 50 Table 4: Number of selected extracts in Vietnamese movies. 50 Table 5: Four basic family dispute termination strategies (adapted). 53 Table 6: Coding system.
55 Table 7: Realization of negating strategy as initial opposition move. 74 Table 8: Changes of addressing forms in Vietnamese family disputes. 94 Table 9: Categories of strong swear words in American family disputes. 96 Table 10: Categories of weak swear words in American family disputes.
96 LISTS OF CHARTS Chart 1: Scores of cultural dimensions for the USA (Hofstede 2010). 22 Chart 2: Scores of cultural dimensions for Vietnam (Hofstede 2010). 23 Chart 3: Position of arguable utterances in spouse conversations. 61 Chart 4: Position of arguable utterances in parent - child conversations.
61 Chart 5: Frequencies of strategies in parent - child disputing situations. 120 Chart 6: Frequencies of strategies in spouse disputing situations. 120 Chart 7: Parent-child dispute termination strategies. 138 Chart 8: Spouse dispute termination strategies.
138 Chart 9: Submitting strategies used in spouse disputes. 140 Chart 10: Submitting strategies used in parent-child disputes. 140 11 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale People, as social beings, frequently communicate with others by using language to convey their messages, to share their ideas and feeling with each other.
In communication, it cannot be denied that harmony and confrontation are compatible and equally important to the development of human society. When two people communicate, sometimes there are disputes between them because both of them have different opinions or thoughts about something, or they do not understand or do not believe in each other. As a result, they try to defend their own opinions. Sometimes they cannot restrain their emotion, which leads to quarrels in which they make all effort to defend their own opinions.
Disputes are emergent social phenomena, which are noticeable by participants through their communicative behaviour. Although many people have prejudice against disputes and think that they have negative meanings, it should be pointed out that dispute phenomenon is value-neutral and impartial. Whether the fact that its result is positive or negative mainly depends on how the dispute is managed by interactants. Apparently, disputes may have destructive consequences.
Throughout their lives, people are faced with many kinds of disputes and conflicts. Many disputing situations go by just as quickly as they emerge. Others, however, have a long-lasting (positive or negative) impact on people’s lives and their social relationships, leading to noncooperation, suspicion, hostility and even violence and crime. However, if managed properly, disputes can produce positive effects, which are helpful to improve interpersonal relations.
Few relationships are more important, long lasting, and influential to people's lives than their family relationships, which apparently are built, maintained, and even destroyed by communication. This is to reflect the importance of communication in family interactions. “Our families, and our images of families, are constituted through social interaction” (Vangelitsti, 2004: xii). It is through communication that family members enact their relationships.
The constitutive link between 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com communication and families is one reason why studying family communication is so important. Since harmony and confrontation occur in nearly all settings, family interaction is not an exception. Disputes between family members are frequent occurrences and in fact a constitutive element of family relationships. Anyone is closely linked to family life and spends much time with family members, who, either in the same generation or not, support or collide with each other in daily activities.
While the intimacy and stability of the relationship may even be conducive to the production of direct disagreement and the expression of hostility, family disputes may take more or less serious forms, ranging from normal disagreement to mild bickering to heated disputes. Sillars et al. (2004) affirm that occurrence of conflict/dispute is inevitable in families, therefore identify conflict/dispute as one of the four fundamental processes in family communication. Accordingly, examining family disputes is essential to understand family members and family relationships.
Communication between family members in their disputes has been chosen for investigation in this study firstly because of the researcher’s desire to investigate on confrontational perspective of daily communication, which naturally combines both cooperational and confrontational strategies. Secondly it will be of great help to have a clearer picture of family relationships, to understand more deeply about how disputes arise, how they are dealt with and how they are resolved, and to identify the linguistic strategies that family members often employ. Due to difficulties of obtaining natural data, the thesis uses movie dialogues as data. All findings are therefore applied to family disputes via movie dialogues.
New contributions and significance of the study This current study is the combination of cross-cultural, cross-linguistic studies and discourse analysis aimed at clarifying similarities and differences between Vietnamese and American family disputes when comparing each stage of their communication process. In detail, it will provide a clearer picture of family disputes 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com in terms of stages (especially the escalation stage that has been ignored in previous research) and strategies family members employ. The study has both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, its findings would serve implications for research of sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication, cross-cultural pragmatics, interpersonal conflicts, argumentative talks, movie discourse, etc.