MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M. THESIS MODALITIES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE OFFERS (Tính tình thái trong lời đề nghị tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt) HO THI MINH THAI Field: English Language Code: 8.01 Hanoi, 11 / 2020 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M. THESIS MODALITIES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE OFFERS (Tính tình thái trong lời đề nghị tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt) HO THI MINH THAI Field: English Language Code: 8. Hoang Tuyet Minh Hanoi, 11 / 2020 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “Modalities in English and Vietnamese offers” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language.
Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis. Hanoi, 2020 Approved by SUPERVISOR (Signature and full name) Assoc. Hoàng Tuyết Minh Date:………………………….…… i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to many people who have supervised, advised and encouraged me during my research, and acknowledge their contribution directly or indirectly to the accomplishment of my thesis. First and foremost, I am really grateful to my supervisor, Assoc.
Hoang Tuyet Minh for her insightful questions, comments and advice for me right from sketching out the plan of the research, and especially her enthusiastic supervision during the time I composed my research, at various stages of developing my thinking and writing this thesis. Without her supervision, this thesis would not have been led to itssubmission. Also, I deeply indebted to all my lecturers at HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY for their useful lectures as well as their constant support and insightful suggestions. In addition, I am also grateful for my friends who gave me unconditional encouragement and inspiration.
Last but not least, I wish to express my thanks to my family. With their support and invaluable help, I could pay more attention on my studies and thesis. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality i Acknowledgements ii Table of contents iii Abstract vi List of abbreviations vii List of tables and figures viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 2 1. Methods of the study 2 1.
Scope of the study 5 1. Significance of the study 5 1. Structure of the study 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7 2. An overview of modalities 11 2.
Classification of modalities 17 2. Linguistic means to express modalities 22 2. An overview of offers 26 2. Offering as a speech act 28 2.
Offering and forms of offers. Politeness in offering 34 2. Summary 36 CHAPTER 3: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF MODALITIES 37 IN OFFERS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 3. Modalities in English offers 37 3.
In direct offers 37 3. Lexical markers in direct offers 39 3. Other lexical markers 40 3. Grammatical markers in direct offers 40 iii 3.
Prosodic markers – Intonation 42 3. In conventionally indirect offers 43 3. Other lexical markers 44 3. Prosodic markers – Intonation 45 3.
In non-conventionally indirect offers 45 3. Prosodic markers– Intonation 46 3. Modalities in Vietnamese offers 47 3. In direct offers 47 3.
Lexical markers in direct offers 48 3. Other lexical markers 49 3. Grammatical markers in direct offers 51 3. Prosodic markers – Intonation 53 3.
In conventionally indirect offers 54 3. Other lexical markers 55 3. Prosodic markers – Intonation 56 iv 3. In non-conventionally indirect offers 56 3.
Prosodic markers– Intonation 57 3. A comparison between modalities in offers 58 in English and Vietnamese 3. In terms of direct offers in English and Vietnamese 58 3. In terms of conventionally indirect offers 60 in English and Vietnamese 3.
In terms of non-conventionally indirect offers 62 in English and Vietnamese 3. Inplications of the study 64 3. Summary 66 CHAPTER4: CONCLUSION 67 4. Limitation of the study 69 4.
Recommendations and suggestions for further research 70 REFERENCES I APPENDIX IV v ABSTRACT Natural languages offer speakers many and various linguistic devices to facilitate their communication. It can be said that modalities play an important part in communicating activities. This study investigates how speakers of English and Vietnamese express the modal meaning in different offering strategies in terms of linguistic means. It attempts to seek what are the similarities and differences of the modal tools in English and Vietnamese offers.
Data used in this study are collected from various sources of textbooks, literature works, internet, especially English practical textbooks, articles, and novels, stories in English and Vietnamese. To obtain the main objective of the study which is to show the similarities and differences of the modal tools in the two languages, we take examples in both English and Vietnamese into consideration. The results show that in offers, both two languages have three kinds of modal markers, which are lexical markers, grammatical markers, and prosodic markers. However, the usage of these markers is not the same in English and Vietnamese.
This study wishes to help teachers and learners of English have more knowledge of modalities in English and Vietnamese offers when teaching and learning English. The most important thing is to help them improve their skills by providing some applications for teachers and learners. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CA: Contrastive analysis E.g : For example EFL: English as a Foreign Language Etc : Et cetera Fig : Figure Ibid: The same author/ resources I.A: Master of Arts VS: Versus vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2. The commodity exchanged & the speech function and 18 the types of intermediacy Table 2.
Palmer’s classification of modalities in modal system 20 Table 2. Halliday’s modality system of modalization and modulation 21 Table 2. The three basic sentences types in English 30 Table 3. The contribution of modalities in English offers 46 Table 3.
The contribution of modalities in Vietnamese offers 58 Table 3. The contribution of modalities in direct offers in 58 English and Vietnamese. The contribution of modalities in conventionally indirect 60 offers in English and Vietnamese. The contribution of modalities in non- conventionally 62 indirect offers in English and Vietnamese.
A spatial model tense, aspect and modality 14 viii CHAPTER 1. Rationale A language is used as a means of social interaction and it expresses various social roles and performs various communicative functions like questioning, requesting, offering or commanding somebody or telling somebody something. Such types of interpersonal functions of language are reflected in various sentence types like declarative, interrogative and imperative and also through the system of modals. The three choices in the mood system perform various communicative functions like declaring, asking a question, making a request or giving a command.
With these sentence types, modal verbs like “can”, “may”, “will”, “must” help in expressing various social functions such as making a request, seeking permission, expressing rights, obligation and possibility. Sentence types, mood choices and modal verbs are examples of modal markers. Thus, it can be said that modalities are directly related to the social functions of language. The notion of modality as well as linguistic means to express modalities has been studied by a lot of scholars so far; however, research on the way of using modal tools in a specific kind of speech act has been limited.
Offering is one common type of speech act, which shows consideration towards each other and therefore it can reinforce social relationship. In different countries, or cultures, people make offers in different ways. Modalitiesare closely related to the emotion and attitude of the speaker; therefore, in offering, modal tools are usually used. When thinking of modalities, what appear first in our mind may be the modal verbs, which is a familiar concept.
Besides modal verbs, there are many other lexical markers such as modal adverbs, modal adjectives…, grammatical markers such as mood and vocative, and prosodic markers. However, the use of linguistic means to express modalities in offering is not the same in all languages. English and Vietnamese have their own specific features, which leads to a lot of differences in using language. For the above reasons, the author would like to choose the topic “Modalities in English and Vietnamese offers” with the attempt to find out the similarities and differences of the modal tools in English and Vietnamese offers.
It’s also hopeful that this study will be of some help to those who are interested in this aspect of language. Aims and objectives of the study The research aims at helping learners gain better knowledge of modalities in English and Vietnamese offers. In order to gain the above aims, the following objectives are put forward: - To explore the modality markers in making offers in English and Vietnamese. - To compare and contrast the range of modality markers in order to clarify the similarities and differences in the ways Vietnamese and English people use linguistic means to express modalities in offering in their own language and culture.
- To contribute to promoting awareness among foreign language teachers and learners of the mentioned issue. What are modalities in English and Vietnamese offers? 2. What are the similarities and differences between modalities in English and Vietnamese offers? 3. What are the suggested implications for foreign language teachers and learners understanding modalities in English and Vietnamese offers? 1.
Research approaches To reach the goal of the study, two main research approaches are used. They are quantitative and qualitative approaches. According to Saville-Troike (1982), one of the best methods of getting to know one’s own “ways of speaking” is by comparing and contrasting with those of others. This process will reveal the shared and unshared features of linguistic patterns and their meanings.
Thus, contrastive linguistics with its associated research method – Contrastive analysis (CA) - will be used as the primary research framework for this study. For the comparison of the frequencies of usage in the two languages under study, a quantitative analysis of the corpus is adopted. By virtue of the quantitative method, data have been collected for the study including both modalities in English and Vietnamese offers. The qualitative method is applied to describe and analyze the data of the study.
Corpus based methods prove to be very effective in cross-language comparative study. It allows us to access to a large sample of texts and compare various features and 2 frequencies of usage. Therefore, corpus based method is also used in this study for comparative and contrastive purposes. Methods of the study 1.
Major methods In order to achieve the aims and objectives, descriptive and contrastive methods are used in the thesis. The descriptive method is used to describe modalities in English and Vietnamese offers being studied. In this thesis, it is utilized in order to give a full account of lexical markers, grammatical markers, and prosodic markers of modalities. And the contrastive method is to find out the similarities and differences between modalities in English offers with reference to the Vietnamese equivalent.
Supporting methods The supporting methods are analytical, synthetic method and others. As a matter of fact, to investigate in details the modalities in English and Vietnamese with their different features with various nuances of meanings, analytical method is also employed, and then the synthetic method is used for grouping them on the basis of certain criteria according to lexical markers, grammatical markers, and prosodic markers. Moreover, quite a few of research techniques have been combined, such as statistics, componential analysis, and contrastive analysis. In conducting the investigation, setting up a regular consultancy with supervisor for a guidance and academic exchange is a critical technique to find out a right direction for doing the research successfully.
Data collection Samples of data containing modalities taken from sources of English and Vietnamese textbooks, articles, literature works, and internet, especially English practical textbooks, articles, and novels, stories in English and Vietnamese. Besides, the examples to illustrate the offers are also taken from works of Kiefer. D, Perkins, & William Pagliuca (1994), Palmer.