VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ----- ----- PHẠM THỊ ANH ĐÀO WISHES ON THE OCCASION OF BIRTHDAY, WEDDING AND NEW YEAR’S HOLIDAY (OR CHRISTMAS) IN BRITISH AND VIETNAMESE CULTURE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Field Code: 60 22 15 HA NOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ----- ----- PHẠM THI ANH ĐÀO WISHES ON THE OCCASION OF BIRTHDAY, WEDDING AND NEW YEAR’S HOLIDAY (OR CHRISTMAS) IN BRITISH AND VIETNAMESE CULTURE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Field Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc. Nguyễn Văn Độ HA NOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 0.
Rationale of the study 1 0. Aims of the study 1 0. Scope of the study 2 0. Methods of the study 2 0.
Design of the study 2 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 3 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 3 1. Speech acts and wishing 3 1. Speech acts and their classification 3 1. Wishing as a speech act 6 1.
Politeness, face and wishing, a face-threatening act 7 1. Wishing as a face-threatening act 10 1. Relationship of language, culture and communication 10 1. Definition of language 10 1.
Definition of culture 11 1. Definition of communication 11 1. Relationship of language, culture and communication 12 1. Wishing as a need of communication 13 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 14 2.
Instrument of data analysis 14 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Methods of data analysis 15 CHAPTER 3: DISCUSSION ON FINDINGS 16 3. SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRESAND INFORMANTS 16 3. Structure of survey questionnaire 16 3.
Grouping of informants 17 3. VIETNAMESE FINDINGS FROM THE QUESTIONNAIRES 18 3. Comment on the content of Vietnamese wishes in three situations 18 3. Vietnamese birthday wishes 18 3.
Vietnamese wedding wishes 21 3. Vietnamese New Year wishes 24 3. Comment on priorities in wishing 26 3. Comment on social factors governing the way of extending a wish 27 3.
Comment on components of the act of Vietnamese wishing 27 3. ENGLISH FINDINGS FROM THE QUESTIONNAIRES. Comment on the content of English wishes in three situations 28 3. English birthday wishes.
English wedding wishes 30 3. English Christmas and New Year wishes 32 3. Comment on priorities in wishing 33 3. Comment on social factors governing the way of extending a wish 34 3.
Comment on components of the acts of English wishing 35 3. COMPARISON OF THE ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE WAYS OF WISHING. Priorities in wishing 35 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Social factors governing the way of extending a wish 36 3.
Accompaniments to wishes 36 3. Priorities in wishing 37 3. Social factors governing the way of extending a wish 37 3. Accompaniment to wishes 37 CHAPTER 4: IMPLICATIONS FOR ELT 38 4.
Learning to avoid culture shock. Some problems in culture shock. Some potential culture shocks in wishing. 39 PART C: CONCLUSION 41 REFERENCES 42 ENGLISH SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES VIETNAMESE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii LISTS OF TABLES Table 1: Age group correlation between English and Vietnamese respondents Table 2: Gender correlation between English and Vietnamese respondents Table 3: Living area correlation between English and Vietnamese respondents Table 4: Occupation correlation between English and Vietnamese respondents Table 5: The content of Vietnamese birthday wishes Table 6: The content of Vietnamese wedding wishes Table 7: The content of Vietnamese New Year/Christmas wishes Table 8: Rank of importance of occasions Table 9: Rank of importance of social factors Table 10: Components of Vietnamese acts of wishing Table 11: The content of English birthday wishes Table 12: The content of English wedding wishes Table 13: The content of English Christmas and New Year wishes Table 14: Rank of importance of occasions Table 15: Rank of importance of social factors Table 16: Components of English acts of wishing LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 0.
Rationale of the study English nowadays is considered the international language; it is the most widely spoken language which is used in many fields such as economics, trade, tourism, diplomacy, politics, and press. In Vietnam, as a result of the open door economic policy, the number of people learning English for various purposes is on the rise. English is not only taught as an important subject at thousands of foreign languages centers but it is also a compulsory subject in various primary and high schools. Although English has been taught in Vietnam for many years, not until recently has the focus of improving linguistic competence for learners been on syntax, lexical and phonological components of the language.
Many people still believe that being good at English means being good at linguistic components. Thus, cultural factors are paid little attention to. However, today, in our modern world in which globalization is expanding, the need of integrating and communicating across nations is indispensable. Successful communication requires not only purely linguistic competence but also the knowledge of social norms, social values and relations between individuals known as communicative competence.
Communicative competence presupposes ability to use the language correctly and appropriately. This pragmatic competence is as crucial as linguistic competence. The lack of it may lead to impoliteness, misinterpretation, cultural shocks, and even communication breakdown. Hence, the knowledge about cross culture communication is really essential.
On this basis, this study is done to help Vietnamese learners of English to understand English ways of expressing wishes. The focus of the study will be on similarities and differences between Vietnamese and English forms of wishing. Aims of the study The thesis focuses on studying the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese ways of wishing in respect to the following aspects: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 - To investigate the content of expressions used in wishing and non-verbal components of wishes. - To find out social factors having influence on extending a wish and some cultural differences in extending wishes in Vietnam and Britain.To help Vietnamese learners of English have more awareness of English wishing and of how to use it appropriately.
- To offer some suggestions to ELT (English Language Teaching) 0. Scope of the study The study mainly focuses on verbal communication and the analysis of the data collected from the survey questionnaires on extending a wish. Similarities and differences between the English and the Vietnamese in assessing the interference of social factors in wishing are discussed. Also some common accompaniments and nonverbal cues together with wishing are taken into account.
Methods of the study The main method of the study is the quantitative one with techniques: - Consulting reference books - Discussing with teachers and friends - Conducting survey questionnaire - .Studying relevant publications - Resorting to personal observation. Design of the study: This study is divided into three main parts: Part A: Introduction – including the reasons of the study, aims of the study, methods, scope of the study and the design of the study. Part B: Development, including 4 chapters - Chapter 1: Literature review - Chapter 2: Research methodology - Chapter 3: Discussion on findings - Chapter 4: Implications for ELT (English Language Teaching) Part C: Conclusion LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Speech acts and wishing 1.
Speech acts and their classification The concept of speech acts was first developed by Austin in the first edition of the book “How to do things with words” published in 1962. He did not use the term “speech acts” but “performative sentence” or performative utterance” which indicated that “the issue of an utterance is the performing of an utterance” (p6). The term itself was first used by Searle who claimed that “talking is performing acts according to rules” (p22), and that “speech acts […] are the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication. According to Yule (1996:47-48), actions performed via utterance are generally called speech acts and, in English, are commonly given more specific labels such as requesting, apologizing, offering, etc.
The circumstances in which actions are performed to communicate are generally called speech events – activities in which participants use language to interact in some conventional way to reach some outcome. In analyzing a speech act we study how an utterance affects the behaviour of the Speaker and the Hearer. According to Austin (1962) a speech act consists of three related acts: - Locutionary act is the actual form of the utterance. When we perform a locutionary act, we have to produce an utterance of a particular form having a particular meaning and following the rules of a given language.
Yule asserts that a locutionary act is the “basic act of utterance” and the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions is the determinant of this kind of act. For example, a sentence “It’s very hot here” can be counted as a locutionary act as it includes meaningful units of the English language. - Illocutionary act relates to the concrete purposes of an utterance. This makes illocutionary acts different from locutionary acts.
Thus, uttering the same sentence: “It’s very hot here”, the speaker does not only utter it but may also suggest a request (e. to turn on the central heating). LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 The illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance. When we utter a sentence, we assign to it the so-called illocutionary force.
The illocutionary force may be understood as some kind of intended message that a speaker assigns to the sentence he or she utters. As Nguyen Hoa (2001: 151) puts it, “one type of illocutionary force is what is commonly referred to as implication.” For instance, when we ask someone “Have you got the time?” the illocutionary force we assign to this utterance seems to be a question about time rather than whether the addressee has a clock or watch or not. - Perlocutionary act is the result or affect that speaker can achieve by performing the locutionary act. According to Mey (1993: 112), these ultimate effects are dependent on the context of the utterance and are unpredictable.
The hearer may correctly understand the speaker’s intention and do what his/ her interlocutor wants, or the same hearer may deliberately ignore the speaker’s want or desire. When we utter the sentence “It’s very hot here”, we hope the act of turning the central heating on to be done by some hearers. This also means the illocutionary act is performed. Of these three types of speech acts the illocutionary act appears to be the most crucial and discussed because the same utterance can potentially have different illocutionary force.
Take the sentence “I’ll be at the office at noon” as an example for this. The locutionary act of this utterance can be represented as a promise, a threat, a warning or simply a prediction. Thus, the most useful way to distinguish between these is the attitude that the speaker holds towards the prepositional content of what he says. However, in order to help hearers really recognize the intended illocutionary force, two things should be taken into account: Illocutionary force indicating devices and felicity condition.
* Illocutionary force indicating devices include performative verbs that directly show the illocutionary acts. However, speakers do not always perform their speech acts explicitly so Illocutionary force indicating devices that hearers can consider are words, stress, intonation, voice quality and so on. * Felicity conditions are expected or appropriate circumstances which speech acts depend on in order to have effectiveness recognized by hearers. Therefore, the utterance should be said to right person, in the right place, at the right time with rational behaviour.
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