VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ************ TRẦN THỊ BÍCH NGỌC INTERPERSONAL MEANING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE JOB ADVERTISEMENTS: A SYSTEMIC- FUNCTIONAL COMPARISON NGHĨA LIÊN NHÂN TRONG QUẢNG CÁO TUYỂN DỤNG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT: SO SÁNH TRÊN QUAN ĐIỂM CHỨC NĂNG HỆ THỐNG MA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 02 01 Hanoi, 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ************ TRẦN THỊ BÍCH NGỌC INTERPERSONAL MEANING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE JOB ADVERTISEMENTS: A SYSTEMIC- FUNCTIONAL COMPARISON NGHĨA LIÊN NHÂN TRONG QUẢNG CÁO TUYỂN DỤNG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT: SO SÁNH TRÊN QUAN ĐIỂM CHỨC NĂNG HỆ THỐNG MA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 02 01 Supervisor: Prof. Hoàng Văn Vân Hanoi, 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com i DECLARATION I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “Interpersonal Meaning in English and Vietnamese Job Advertisements: A Systemic-Functional Comparison” is entirely the result of my own research unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The thesis has not been submitted for degree at any other academic institution. Hanoi, January 2014 Tran Thi Bich Ngoc LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been achieved without the advice, encouragement and support from my instructors, colleagues, classmates and my family.
First and foremost, I would particularly like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Hoang Van Van for his invaluable guidance, criticism and his encouragement throughout my research. My special thanks go to all instructors and the staff of the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their useful lectures and assistance during my study. I am also very grateful to my colleagues, my friends and classmates at University of Languages and International Studies for their precious support and sincere comments.
Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge my debt to my beloved family who have given me unconditioned love and encouragement, which is very significant for me to fulfill this work. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii ABSTRACT The present thesis endeavors to make a contrastive analysis of the basic realization of interpersonal meaning in the discourse of English and Vietnamese job advertisements. A corpus of fifteen English job advertisements and fifteen Vietnamese ones are selected from the well-known English and Vietnamese recruitment websites at random to carry out the research work. Under the theoretical framework of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, the three linguistic patterns: mood, modality and person system of the target text have been scrutinized respectively.
The study demonstrates how interpersonal meaning is realized under different social and cultural background. It is revealed that although English job advertisements and Vietnamese ones share a few similarities in terms of the realization of interpersonal meaning, there still exist certain disparities. The main similarities include preferred declarative mood, preferred first person pronouns and probability with the highest frequency. The major differences are as follows: English job advertisements employ more interrogatives and imperatives than the Vietnamese counterparts; the English samples use more obligation and personal pronouns than Vietnamese ones.
These disparities can be interpreted by considering the social and cultural differences. By making a comprehensive and detailed study, this thesis is a meaningful application of systemic functional grammar to the discourse of job advertisements. It is expected that this study can be useful for both job advertisers and job hunters. It is also hoped that the findings in the research can be helpful for teaching writing, translating and serve as reference in ESL linguistics classes where SFG is introduced.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION…………………………………………………………………i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .vii PART A: INTRODUCTION.
Rationale of the study. Significance of the study. Aims of the study and research questions. Design of the study.
5 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. An investigation into interpersonal meaning. The person system. Tenor of job advertisements.
Context of situation. Tenor: the interpersonal variable of the context of situation. Tenor of job advertisements. 15 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v CHAPTER 2: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF INTERPERSONAL MEANING IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE JOB ADVERTISEMENTS 2.
A contrastive analysis in terms of mood. Speech roles in job advertisements and mood structures. A contrastive analysis in terms of modality. A contrastive analysis in terms of the person system.
The first person system. The second person system. The third person system. Implications of the study.
Limitations and suggestions for further study .XIX LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Speech functions and commodities exchanged .2 Speech functions and typical mood of clause .3 Modalization and modulation .5 Modality: examples of ―type‖ and orientation combined .1 Distribution and frequency of mood structures in the samples of English job advertisements .2 Distribution and frequency of mood structures in the samples of Vietnamese job advertisements .3 Distribution and frequency of probability in English and Vietnamese job advertisements .4 Distribution and frequency of obligation in English and Vietnamese job advertisements.5 Distribution and frequency of modality in English and Vietnamese job advertisements .6 Distribution and frequency of the person system in English and Vietnamese job advertisements. 35 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 The power continuum .2 The contact continuum .3 The affective involvement continuum. 14 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ESL English as Second Language SFG Systemic Functional Grammar SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Not only is language used to represent the interlocutors’ experience of the world around them, but also to express interpersonal meaning, the function language used to interact with other people in order to establish and maintain the relationship between them as well as to reflect the writer’s attitude towards the subject matter (Halliday, 1994).
Since language is an effective means of communication, interpersonal meaning is an indispensable component among the three meta-functions in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). Interpersonal meaning has recently become a matter of great concern among researchers. Until now, there have been a considerable number of studies on interpersonal meaning of different types of discourses on the basis of SFG ranging from political speeches, fundraisings to advertisements. Among all these discourses, advertising is the most contacted in our current society.
Within the field of advertisements, there are studies on interpersonal meaning in advertising in general or particularly in different types of advertisements. A distinctive example of the study on interpersonal meaning in English advertising is the research by Xiao-xia (2008). It was found that advertisers employ the mood systems and person system to create an intimate atmosphere, thus enhancing the interactivity and trustworthiness. Different kinds of advertisements have also been studied in recent years like the study on hotel and apartment advertisements by Sinaga (2012) or political advertisements in some Nigerian newspapers by Olusanya (2013).
As a sub-category of advertisements, job advertisements belong to the persuasive genre with the aim of establishing the relationship between the recruiters and potential applicants; therefore, they contribute as a fruitful source for researchers to carry out studies on interpersonal meaning. However, it is revealed that most research mainly focused on English recruitment advertising discourse like studies by Yan & Li (2007) and Liang (2009). Those on Vietnamese job advertisements are seldom found not to mention the comparative study on interpersonal meaning in English and Vietnamese LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 job advertisements. This has instigated the researcher to conduct an investigation on the interpersonal meaning in the discourse of English and Vietnamese job advertisements since the realization of interpersonal meaning can vary in different cultural and social contexts.
Significance of the study The focus of the study not only lies in the theoretical findings, but it is hoped that it will also emerge as a practical application of the theory to the description and analysis of job advertisements. Practically speaking, the analysis of interpersonal meaning in job advertisements can give illuminations to job advertisers and job hunters. Moreover, the contrastive analysis of interpersonal meaning in English and Vietnamese job advertising texts is hoped to be useful for teaching practical English writing, translating and serving as a reference to be employed in ESL linguistics classes where Halliday’s theory of SFG is introduced. Aims of the study and research questions The overarching aim of this thesis is to investigate the realization of interpersonal meaning in English and Vietnamese job advertisements and to establish the similarities and differences in the realization of interpersonal meaning in the job advertisements of the two languages.
To achieve this aim, the following research questions are raised: 1. How is interpersonal meaning realized lexico-grammatically in English and Vietnamese job advertisements? 2. What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese job advertisements in terms of the realization of interpersonal meaning? 4. Methodology A variety of job advertisements can be issued through numerous ways from traditional channels such as TV, the daily and periodical press, poster to new channels like the Internet.
This thesis only focuses on those issued on the Internet because more and more corporations currently apply the way of recruiting through the net to take more potential talents. To carry out the comparison between the LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 advertisements in the two languages, a corpus of fifteen English and fifteen Vietnamese advertisement texts were collected. The Vietnamese data were selected from www.com, the top recruitment website in Vietnam. Likewise, the English corpus was chosen from www.com , one of the largest and most reliable professional recruiting website in America.
All of the thirty job advertisements are listed in Appendices 1 and 2. In the process of data collection, to avoid the limitation of singularity in one field, the author tried to concern as many domains as possible, such as accounting, education, banking, constructing, tourism, and so forth. For the sake of convenience, the letter E followed by a number of data ranging from 1 to 15 refers to the English job advertisements while the letter V to the Vietnamese job advertisements. The main subject of this research is the written discourse of job advertisement; therefore, the titles, slogans and image of the company are not taken into consideration.
The present research aims to investigate the realization of interpersonal meaning in the discourse of job advertisements in English and Vietnamese from the perspective of systemic functional grammar. Therefore, this study brings in the Hallidayian Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model of text analysis as the theoretical framework for the analysis and comparison of the job advertisement texts. According to Halliday (1994), the mood and modality systems are the basic means to realize interpersonal meaning lexico-grammatically in the clause. Later, pronoun system, attitudinal modifier and rhythmic features of word are also added.
The researcher made a critical view of the previous studies of interpersonal meaning and intended to analyze the realization of interpersonal meaning from three aspects: mood, modality, and the person system. The analytical procedure is made up of three steps. First, the representations of mood, modality and person system in English and Vietnamese job advertisements were identified. Second, the frequencies of the above-mentioned expressions in English and Vietnamese corpus were counted respectively, and then the figures were listed in a table to show similarities and differences between English and LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 Vietnamese job advertisements.
Finally, the study gave an interpretation of these similarities and differences by taking cultural and social differences into consideration.