Vietnam national university, ha noi College of foreign languages Post graduate department Nguyen NHu Trang A Vietnamese – Australian cross – cultural study on hiding feelings at the workplace.A minor thesis Field: Linguistics Code: 602215 Ha noi, 2009 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Vietnam national university, ha noi College of foreign languages Post graduate department Nguyen NHu Trang A Vietnamese – Australian cross – cultural study on hiding feelings at the workplace.A minor thesis Field: Linguistics Code: 602215 Supervisor: Phan Thi Van Quyen, MA Ha noi, 2009 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ……………………………………………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………… .ii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………………iii Table of content …………………………………………………………………………………………iv List of tables ……………………………………………………………………………………………v Abbreviations and Conventions ……………………………………………………………………vi part I: introduction ………………………………….1 1 Rationale of the study …………………………………………………………………. Aims and objectives of the study. Scope of the study……………………………………………………………………….Significance of the study: ……………………………………………………………………. The design of the study: ………………………………………………………………….4 Part II: development ………………………………….5 Chapter 1: Literature Review ………………………………………………………5 1.
Factors affecting human communication ……………………………………………. Culture and Communication ………………………………………………………………9 1.12 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Notion of politeness……………………………………………………………………12 1. Notions of face and facework …………………………………………………………13 1.
Hiding feelings in social interaction ……………………………………………….……16 Chapter II: Methodology …………………………………………………………. Data collection instrument………………………………………………………………20 2. Questionnaire and Participants …………………………………………………………. Administration of the Questionnaires ………………………………………………….22 Chapter 3: findings and Discussions…………………………………………24 3.
What are the influential factors on the choice of verbal strategies of hiding feelings in Australian English and Vietnamese? …………………………………/……………………24 3. How often do Vietnamese and Australian people hide their feelings at the workplace? ………………28 3. What are the verbal strategies of hiding feelings used by Australian and Vietnamese people? …………29 3. Verbal strategies used by Australian and Vietnamese people to hide their feelings ………………….
Use of strategies by Vietnamese participants in specific situations ……………….3 Use of strategies by Australian participants in specific situations ……………………35 3.37 Part III : conclusion and implications ………………. Implication of the study……………………………………………………………………. Implications for intercultural communicators ……………………………………………41 2. Implications for EFL teachers ……………………………………………………………41 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Limitations of the study and Recommendations for future research ………………………42 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………….44 Appendix 1……………………………………………………………………………………46 Appendix 2……………………………………………………………………………………49 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.workplace vii Abbreviations and CONVENTIONS Dct Discourse completion Task FTA Face threatening Act EFL English as a Foreign Language L2 Second language S Subject TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.workplace viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Factors governing the choice of strategies in hiding feelings by Vietnamese people……………………………………………………………………………….23 Table 2: Factors governing the choice of hiding feelings strategies by Australian people……………………………………………………………………………….24 Table 3: Differences between Australian and Vietnamese participants hiding feelings in specific situations (by percentage) ………………………………………………26 Table 4: The frequency of hiding feelings by the two groups (by percentage) …………28 Table 5: Differences between Australian and Vietnamese participants hiding feelings in specific situations (by percentage) …………………………………………. 29 Table 6: Strategies used by Australian and Vietnamese people to hide their feelings (by percentage) …………………………………………………………………….31 Table 7: Summary: Use of strategies by Vietnamese participants …………………………32 Table 8: Summary: Use of strategies by Australian ……………………………………….35 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.workplace 1 part I: introduction I.1 Rationale of the study It is undeniable that language is a tool of human communication. Various kinds of meanings can be conveyed in language which involves the interaction between the speaker and the hearers. However, successful communication requires not only pure linguistic competence but also knowledge of social norms, social values and relations between interactants.
As language, to some extend, is part of or a manifestation of its culture (Davies, 1989 in Nguyen Van Do, 2007). Culture, language, and society are closely related to each other and interact between themselves. Therefore, communication breakdown or culture shock may happen in cross – cultural interaction when interactors are not aware of cultural barrier. In other words, the interpretation of an utterance should be involved both linguistic pattern and the socio – cultural background of the speaker.
It is no secret that today‘s workplace is rapidly becoming larger and larger, as the business environment expands to include various geographic locations and span numerous cultures. What can be difficult, however, is understanding how to communicate effective with individuals who speak another language or who rely on different means to reach a common goal. The world today is dramatically different from that of twenty or even ten years ago. The influence of Multinational Corporation, the technological revolution, the ―information superhighway‖ and the movement of the private and public sectors towards globalization sets the sense.
New laws, agreements and regional partnership from NAFTA to GATT to the European Union or Asian, have contributed to make this massive change not only possible but also achievable. Vietnam is a country where intercultural contacts are rapidly increasing, following the introduction of the renovation process since 1986. Opened door policy allows more foreign companies and partners to invest in most industries in the country to help boost the economy. This process has resulted in increasing interactions between Vietnamese and foreigners, especially from English – speaking countries.workplace TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.workplace 2 We investigate how culture influences the hiding feelings at the workplace by Australian speakers of English and Vietnamese.
We choose hiding feelings to study as in our daily life we hide our feelings so often to achieve our purposes that we are sometimes unaware of the fact that we are doing so. Hiding feelings is so important in communication. Without it communication may be broken-down and our relationships may be broken, as a result. Hiding feelings is very various across cultures so misunderstanding can arise if we do not apply pragmatic competence appropriately.
Taking into consideration the importance of pragmatic competence and the social setting of Vietnam, the study is significant in that it is conducted with the hope of resolving and simplifying cross- cultural misunderstanding. For more details: I. Aims and objectives of the study. As far as we know, there is a gap in our understanding of how Vs and Aus hide their feelings at the workplace and how culture influences their use of language patterns at the workplace.
So this study aims to find out: 1. How Australian and Vietnamese hide their feelings at the workplace. How social-cultural factors such as social status, gender, age, … influence the choice of hiding feeling strategies of both groups. For more details, this study aims to answer the following questions: 1.
What are the influential factors on verbal strategies of hiding feelings in Australian English and Vietnamese? 2. How often do Vietnamese and Australian people hide their feelings at the workplace? 3. What are the verbal strategies of hiding feelings used by Australian and Vietnamese people? Research hypotheses. To achieve the aims of the study, the following hypotheses are suggested for investigation: a.
There are some differences in the frequency and the way of hiding feelings at the workplace between Vietnamese and Australian (LUAN.workplace TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Some factors such as interlocutor‘s status, age, gender. affect the choice of hiding feeling strategies used by Australian and Vietnamese people. Scope of the study.
Hiding feelings is clearly essential in communication. And to achieve the best result, speaker usually makes use of both verbal and nonverbal cues. However, in fact, there are a few nonverbal cues for hiding feelings: some use eyes contact, some use hands. while many verbal cues are available for people to hide their feelings.
These verbal cues are various and different depending on the cultures of communicators, their backgrounds ect. Therefore, in this thesis, we would like to focus mainly on verbal strategies. Hiding feelings takes place everywhere: in the family, at school, at the public places… However, the author choose to study hiding feelings at the workplace because the world is now globalized, the workplace now is a multicultural place. Amid today‘s heightened global tensions, success increasingly belongs to people who can work effectively across cultures and languages.
The author should think that the understanding of how Australian and Vietnamese people hide their feelings may be helpful for those working in multicultural environment. The researcher makes an investigation into how Vietnamese and Australian use the language to hide their true feelings at the workplace I. Methodology To achieve the aims and objectives mentioned above, the study compare and contrast the verbal strategies of hiding feelings of the two groups basing on the statistical and qualitative data collected from a survey questionnaire modified from the Discourse Completion Task developed by Beebe et al. The survey questionnaires are given to 40 Vietnamese people who are working at offices in Hanoi and 40 Australian people who are working in Australia.
Besides, more information needed for the study are gathered from researcher‘s observation. To process the data, quantitative method, contrastive analysis methods are employed. Significance of the study.workplace TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.workplace 4 This study may provide insights into the similarities and differences between Vietnamese and Australian in the frequency as well as the verbal strategies of hiding feelings. The author would like to give some cultural explanations for these similarities and differences.
Hopefully, it may help achieve successful communication in an international working environment. The design of the study: The study is divided into three parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion. The introduction provides the information such as the rationale, the aims, the scope, the method and the significance of the study. The development consists of three chapters.
Chapter one, Literature Review, presents the concepts relevant to the research topic such as different points of view of culture and communication, politeness. Chapter two deals with specific information of the method, the survey questionnaire and the respondents. It also presents analysis of the data collected from the survey questionnaire. The last chapter presents some major findings.
The conclusion is a review of the study, the limitation of the study and suggestions for further study.workplace TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.workplace 5 Part II: development Chapter 1: Literature Review This chapter reviews the theories and literature within which the research is carried out. It consists of 3 main sections. The two first sections view the theories of culture and communication. The third one deals with the other related issues: politeness in human communication.Culture Culture is ‗ubiquitous, complex and all-pervasive‘ (A.
Therefore, it is very difficult to define this term. The term ‗culture‘ has a wide range of meanings today because it has actually changed in meaning overtime. In fact, there are many definitions of it ranging from complex and fancy to simple ones. For some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food.
for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. Tylor (1871 in Heather Bowe and Kelie Martin, 2007) an anthropologist said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society‖(p2) Here the author would like to use the definition of H. Triandis cited in A. Samorva, 2007:20 for the reason that this definition contains the theme under investigation in this thesis of how culture and communication are linked.
―Culture is a set of human- made objective and subjective elements that in the past have increased the probability of survival and resulted in satisfaction for the participants in an ecological niche, and thus become shared among those who could communicate with each other because they had a common language and they lived in the same time and place.‖ Subjective elements mentioned in this definition are ―values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent among people in a society‖. All of them influence your interpretation of the world and interactions in it.workplace TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. People have known that communication is an important part of life, a well-integrated part of day-to-day existence. ―Communication is powerful; It brings companions to our sides or scatters our rivals, reassures or alerts children; and forges consensus or battle lines between us‖ (C.
F Keating, 19794 in Larry.