Tài liệu Pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by vietnamese learners of english

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH BA Thesis Field of study: English Language Teaching Supervisor: BUI LAN CHI, M.A Researcher: Nguyen Thi Hong Quyen Class: NN0652A1 Student code: 7062919 Course: 32 Can Tho, April 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to give my deep gratitude to Mrs. Bui Lan Chi, whose comments and suggestions were very useful to make my thesis possible. Next, I also would like to thank my friend, Mr. Tran Quang Nhat, who helped me deliver the Discourse Completion Task questionnaires to American native speakers. Moreover, I really appreciate the great help of English majored and nonmajored students of Can Tho University as well as American native speakers who participated in my thesis. Last but not least, my gratitude is extended to English Department of Can Tho University for offering the most favorable conditions to help me complete this thesis. TÓM TẮT Nghiên cứu này nhằm khảo sát sự khác nhau giữa cách đáp lại lời khen của người Việt bản ngữ và người Mĩ bản ngữ và ảnh hưởng tiếng mẹ đẻ của người Việt học tiếng Anh khi đáp lại lời khen bằng tiếng Anh. Công cụ duy nhất để thu thập số liệu cho luận văn này là “phiếu thu thập số liệu.” Phiếu thu thập số liệu với hai phiên bản: một bản bằng tiếng Anh và một bản bằng tiếng Việt được thiết kế bao gồm tám tình huống, dựa trên bốn chủ đề khen ngợi: bề ngoài, sở hữu, kỹ năng và tính cách. Những lời đáp lại lời khen được thu thập từ 30 người, được chia thành ba nhóm: nhóm người Mĩ bản ngữ, nhóm người Việt bản ngữ và nhóm người Việt học tiếng Anh. Kết quả cho thấy sự khác biệt lớn trong cách đáp lại lời khen giữa người Mĩ bản ngữ và người Việt bản ngữ, tập trung vào hai hướng: tần suất của chiến lược đáp lại lời khen và nội dung của chiến lược. Ngoài ra, kết quả cũng cho thấy rằng có sự ảnh hưởng tiếng mẹ đẻ trong cách đáp lại lời khen của người Việt học tiếng Anh. Các ảnh hưởng này thể hiện ở hai cấp độ: tần suất của những chiến lược và nội dung của những chiến lược. Kết luận rút ra giúp cung cấp thêm nguồn tài liệu cho việc sử dụng thích hợp tiếng Anh trong giao tiếp đa ngôn ngữ và nâng cao ý thức của người Việt học tiếng Anh về khả năng ngữ dụng và ý thức về sự khác biệt văn hóa khi giao tiếp, sử dụng tiếng Anh như một ngoại ngữ. ABSTRACT This study was conducted to investigate the differences between compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and by American native speakers as well as the pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English when responding to compliments in English. To collect data, Discourse Completion Task was employed as the only instrument. The Discourse Completion Task questionnaires with two versions: one in English and one in Vietnamese were designed to include eight scenarios based on four compliment topics: appearance, possession, accomplishment/skills and personality traits. The compliment responses were collected from thirty people who were divided into three groups: American native speakers (ANS), Vietnamese native speakers (VNS) and Vietnamese learners of English (VLE). The results revealed a significant difference in compliment responses by American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers focusing on two dimensions: the frequency of compliment response strategies and the content of the strategies. Moreover, the results also demonstrated evidence of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese learners of English. This pragmatic transfer was at two levels: the levels of the frequency of compliment response strategies and the level of content of the strategies. The findings helps to provide more literature for the appropriate use of English language in intercommunication and raise the awareness of Vietnamese learners of English about pragmatic competence and cross-culture when communicating in English as a foreign language. TABLE OF CONTENT Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................i Abstract (Vietnamese)................................................................................................. ii Abstract (English)...................................................................................................... iii List of Tables...............................................................................................................vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................vii Abbreviations........................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................1 1.1 Rationale .......................................................................................................1 1.2 Aims and significance of the present study ...................................................1 1.2.1 Aims of the study .................................................................................2 1.2.2 Significance of the present study ..........................................................2 1.3 Organization of the thesis .............................................................................2 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW....................................................................4 2.1 Communicative competence..........................................................................4 2.2 Pragmatic competence...................................................................................5 2.3 Pragmatic transfer.........................................................................................6 2.4 Speech act theory .........................................................................................6 2.5 Compliments and compliment responses ......................................................7 2.5.1 Definition of compliments ...................................................................7 2.5.2 Lexical and syntactical features of compliments ..................................7 2.5.3 Compliment topics...............................................................................7 2.5.4 Classification of compliment response strategies .................................8 2.6 Inter-language studies on compliment responses ..........................................9 2.7 Inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses ......10 CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHOD ....................................................................12 3.1 Research questions.....................................................................................12 3.2 Hypotheses.................................................................................................12 3.3 Participants ................................................................................................12 3.4 Data collection instrument..........................................................................13 3.4.1 Rationale for using DCT...................................................................13 3.4.2 Description of DCT questionnaire ....................................................13 3.5 Data analysis..............................................................................................13 CHAPTER 4. RESULTS...........................................................................................15 4.1 General results ...........................................................................................15 4.2 Vietnamese native speaker group vs. American native speaker group ........15 4.2.1 Differences in the frequency of compliment response strategies .......16 4.2.2 Differences in the content of compliment response strategies............18 4.3 Vietnamese learners of English and pragmatic transfer ..............................20 4.3.1 Pragmatic transfer in the frequency of compliment response strategies....................................................................................................20 4.3.2 Pragmatic transfer in the content of compliment response strategies ..................................................................................................................23 CHAPTER 5. DISCUSSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS, SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSION....................................................................26 5.1 Discussions of the findings.........................................................................26 5.2 Implications ...............................................................................................27 5.3 Limitations.................................................................................................27 5.4 Suggestions for further research .................................................................27 5.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................28 REFERENCES ...........................................................................................................ix APPENDIX A .............................................................................................................xi APPENDIX B.............................................................................................................xii APPENDIX C .......................................................................................................... xiii List of Tables Table 2.1 Herbert's taxonomy of compliment responses Table 2.2 Contrastive studies on compliment responses Table 2.3 Inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses Table 3.1 Grouping of participants Table 4.1 Number of agreement and on-agreement strategies produced by three groups: American native speaker group (ANS), Vietnamese native speaker group (VNS) and Vietnamese learners of English group (VLE) Table 4.2 Number of compliment response sub-strategies produced by American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers List of Figures Figure 2.1 Communicative language competence in the Common European Framework (CEF) Figure 4.1 Differences in agreement and non-agreement strategies produced by American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers Figure 4.2 Differences in compliment response sub-strategies produced by American native speakers and Vietnamese native speakers Figure 4.3 Pragmatic transfer in agreement and non-agreement compliment response strategies by Vietnamese learners of English Figure 4.4 Pragmatic transfer in compliment response sub-strategies by Vietnamese learners of English Abbreviations CR Compliment response CRs Compliment responses ANS American native speakers VNS Vietnamese native speakers VLE Vietnamese learners of English DCT Discourse Completion Task L1 First Language L2 Second Language CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter includes three parts: (1) the rationale for this study, (2) the aims and the significance of the present study, and (3) the organization of the thesis. 1.1 RATIONALE In the intercommunication, the misunderstanding and the communication breakdowns are unavoidable because of different cultural norms and different pragmatic knowledge. Smiling, for instance, in Korean culture means that a person is foolish or thoughtless. However, on the island of Puerto Rico, a smile can have many positive meanings: “Please”, “Thank you”, and “You’re welcome.” (Tanka and Baker, 2002, p.313) These misunderstandings were demonstrated to be due to the effects of the mother tongue on the interpretation and the production of the foreign language. These effects were investigated in a number of previous studies and called the “pragmatic transfer”. While people can forgive the mistakes of pronunciation and grammar, they may consider the inappropriate use of language forms as rudeness. Therefore, pragmatic transfer plays an important role in the field of Pragmatics and Applied Linguistics. Vietnam has been co-operating with many foreign countries, using English as the international language. It is required that the Vietnamese have to speak English not only fluently but also appropriately. There have been a number of studies on pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English in the speech acts of refusals, apologies, requests, compliments… However, very few studies focused on the pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English in compliment responses. Hence, conducting study in this line helps to provide more literature on the issue of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses in the process of teaching and learning English. It also contributes to raise the awareness of Vietnamese learners of English about pragmatic competence and cross-culture. It is also hoped that the communication breakdowns in the intercommunication between Vietnamese non-native speakers of English and native speakers of English can be reduced. 1.2 AIMS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESENT STUDY 1.2.1 Aims of the study This study aims at finding out the differences in compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and American native speakers as well as the evidence of pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English when responding to compliments in English. 1.2.2 Significance of the present study As discussed in the previous section, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese learners of English. The findings help to provide more literature on pragmatic transfer issue. Therefore, it is hoped to make the process of teaching and learning English more effective. The communication breakdowns caused by pragmatic transfer in compliment responses can be avoided some-how. 1.3 ORGANISATION OF THE THESIS This thesis consisted of five chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) Literature review, (3) Research method, (4) Results, (5) Discussions, implications, limitations, suggestions and conclusion. Chapter 1 presents the rationale for conducting the study on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese learners of English. Moreover, the aims and the significance of the present study as well as the organization of the thesis were also included in this chapter. Chapter 2 reviews the literature relevant to the thesis topic as well as summarizes and analyzes the previous studies. In this chapter, the “communicative competence”, the “pragmatic competence”, the theory of “speech acts”, the “pragmatic transfer” as well as the compliments and compliment responses were described. In addition, “inter-language studies on compliment responses” and “inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses” were presented. Chapter 3 introduces the research questions and the hypotheses as well as describes the collecting data instrument, the participants and the data analysis procedure. Chapter 4 focuses on describing the results found. It includes: the overall results, the differences in compliment responses by Vietnamese native speakers and American native speakers, the pragmatic transfer by Vietnamese learners of English when responding to compliments in English. Chapter 5 discusses the results and the limitations of the present study. Teaching implications are then suggested. CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews the literature relevant to the thesis topic and analyses the previous studies. It includes seven parts: (1) Communicative competence, (2) Pragmatic competence, (3) Pragmatic transfer, (4) Speech act theory, (5) Compliments and compliment responses, (6) Interlanguage studies on compliment responses, (7) Inter-language studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses. 2.1 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE The concept “communicative competence” is comprised of two words in which the word “competence” has been the most controversial term in general applied linguistics since 1960s. It came from the classic distinction of Chomsky between “competence” and “performance”. According to Chomsky, competence refers to the monolingual speakers-listener's knowledge of language and performance refers to the actual use of language in real situation. However, Chomsky received the strong disapproval from advocates for communicative views at the idea of using concept of idealized, purely linguistic competence (Savigon, 1972). In 1972, Dell Hymes proposed the concept of “communicative competence,” which is considered broader and more realistic. Competence is considered not only as the knowledge of but also the ability to use language with appropriate items. Therefore, Hymes included both grammatical competence to form correct sentences and ability to use grammatical competence in variety of communicative situation. Since Hymes proposed the concept “communicative competence,” it has been discussed and redefined by many other authors. In 1988, Spitzberg defined communicative competence as “the ability to interact well with others” (p.68). He explains the term 'well' refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness” (p.68). In 1994, a much more complete definition was provided by Friedrich. According to him, communicative competence is best understood as “a situational ability to set realistic and appropriate goals and to maximize their achievement by using knowledge of self, other, context, and communication theory to generate adaptive communication performance”. Although communicative competence has been discussed and redefined many times, the basic idea remains knowledge and ability/skills for language use. After years of studying communicative competence, many theoreticians in the field of applied linguistics have reached an agreement “that a competent language user should process not only knowledge about language but also the ability and skills to activate that knowledge in a communication event.” (Bagaric’ & Dijigunovic’, 2007: 73). Since then, communicative competence has widely become the goal of language learning process. 2.2 PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE The notion “pragmatic competence” has been mentioned in the communicative competence models of many linguists since 1980 (Canal and Swain, 1980, Bachman and Palmer, 1990, 1996). However, it is more comprehensive in the description of components of communicative language competence in the Common European Framework (CEF) (2001). Figure 2.1 Communicative language competence in the Common European Framework (CEF) Communicative language competence Language competence Pragmatic competence Discourse competence Functional competence Socio linguistic competence As shown in the CEF, pragmatic competence is one of three components that form communicative language competence (another term for communicative competence). It is very distinct from language/linguistic competence and sociolinguistic competence. Language competence is defined as knowledge of and ability to use language resources to form well-structured messages. Thus it involves lexical, grammatical, semantic, phonological, orthographic and orthopedic competences. Both of the last two components concerns with the appropriate use of language. However, sociolinguistic competence refers to the possession of knowledge and skills for appropriate language use in a social context. It involves rules of appropriate behaviors, expressions of people's wisdom, differences in register and dialects and stress. Whereas, pragmatic competence is defined as knowledge of how verbal acts are understood and performed in accordance with a speaker's intention under contextual and discoursal constraints” (Faerch& Kasper, 1984:214) and ability to apply it. Pragmatic competence is broken down into two sub-components: discourse competence and functional competence. Discourse competence is defined as the ability to combine language structures into different types of cohesive texts. Functional competence refers to the relationship between utterances and the intentions or communicative purposes of language users. All in all, pragmatic competence is an important component that contributes to the appropriate and effective communication of interactants from different languages. 2.3 PRAGMATIC TRANSFER The term “transfer” is generally used to refer to the systematic influences of existing knowledge on the acquisition of new knowledge. The transfer studies originated very early during 1940s and 1950s. However, those studies did not address pragmatic issues until recently. According to Wolfson (1989), pragmatic transfer has been referred to as sociolinguistic transfer. Beebe (1990) considered pragmatic transfer as the transfer of L1 sociocultural competence or crosslinguistic influence. Although there are various ideas about pragmatics and about transfer, the term “pragmatic transfer is best understood by Kasper. According to him, the pragmatic transfer refers to the influence that previous pragmatic knowledge of L1 has on the use and acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge. “Pragmatic transfer shall refer to the influence exerted by learners’ pragmatic knowledge of languages and cultures other than L1 on their comprehension, production and learning of L2 pragmatic information.” (Kasper, 1992: 207) 2.4 SPEECH ACT THEORY Speech act theory was originated by Austin (1962). He claimed that many utterances are equivalent to actions. For example, when we say “This food is very delicious”, we are actually communicating an action like compliments. Speech act theory focuses much on the classification of speech acts. Austin firstly found a great distinction between constatives and performatives. A constative is considered to convey a message which can be compared with the real world and declared true or false. “The cat is on the table” is an example of a constative. On the other hand, a performative is considered to be a sentence which is not true or false. Rather than conveying a message, a performative acts upon the world; it doesn’t say something, it does something. “I promise I’ll go back” is an example of a performative. According to Austin, performatives include three categories: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts. Locutionary acts are defined as the semantic or literal significance of the utterance. Illocutionary acts are the most important. It involves the intention of the speaker. Perlocutionary acts are the effect the speech act has on the listener. Developing from Austin’s original study, Searle (1962) divided illocutionary acts into five sub-categories: directive, commissive, expressive, representative and declaration.  Directive: The speaker wants the listener to do something.  Commissive: The speaker indicates the she herself will do something in the future.  Expressive: The speaker expresses her feelings or emotional response.  Representative: The speaker expresses her belief about the truth of a proposition.  Declaration: Her utterance results in a change in the external non-linguistic situation. 2.5 COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLIMENT RESPONSES 2.5.1 Definition of compliments Compliments are positive speech acts that establish solidarity and increase rapport among people. For any culture, a compliment must express approval of something that both parties, speakers and addressees, regard positively (Manes, 1983), and it must be valued by the culture indicated (Holms, 1987; Manes, 1983). According to Holms (1988b, p.446), “A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some “good” (possession, characteristic, skill,..), which is positively valued by the speakers and the hearers.” 2.5.2 Lexical and syntactical features of compliments Compliments and compliment responses have been widely studied since 1970s. While later studies focused on how it differs across cultures, the early studies focused on describing English compliments. In 1980, Wolfson and Manes on their research on American English identified some lexical and syntactical features of English compliments. They found English compliments to be formulaic, that speakers use a small number of adjectives, and that compliments and compliment responses could be classified into types of structures: adjective, verb, adverb, and noun. . “Your blouse looks beautiful!” is an example of adjectival compliment. About 2/3 of adjectival compliments use the words nice, good, pretty, or beautiful (Manes and Wolfson, 1981). Good is often used for performance and nice is mostly used for appearance/attire (Knapp et al., 1984). “I really love your car!” is an example of a compliment that contains a semantically positive verb. Love and like are used 90% of the time in this type of compliment. Some other positive verbs that are used would be admire and be impressed (Wolfson, 1989). 2.5.3 Compliment topics Major compliment topics can be classified into three categories:  Appearance/possessions Compliments on someone’s appearance or possessions are the most common type of compliments in American English (Wolfson, 1981).  Performance/ skills/abilities “You did a good job!” and “You are such a beautiful writer” are examples of compliments on performances/skills/abilities.  Personality traits Such compliments as “Good boy” and “You’re so sweet” are compliments on addressee’s personality traits. This category of compliments occurs less frequently than those on appearance / possessions and performance / skills / abilities (Holmes, 1988). 2.5.4 Classification of compliment response strategies The first researcher who discussed compliment responses from the pragmatic perspective was Pomerantz (1978). According to her, in American English the interactant faces a conflict when responding to a compliment: (A) AGREE WITH THE SPEAKER and (B) AVOID SELF-PRAISE (pp. 81-82). It means that if the speaker accepts the compliments, s/he may be considered as lacking modesty. If s/he rejects the compliments, s/he may be considered as lacking appreciation of the speaker's opinion and value. Therefore, they have some strategies to avoid this conflict categorized by Pomerantz as acceptance, rejection, and self-praise avoidance. Elaborating from Pomerantz's taxonomy, Herbert (1986 and 1990) conducted a large scale analysis and ended up with a three-category, twelvestrategy taxonomy (Table 2.1). Table 2.1 Herbert's taxonomy of compliment responses Response strategies A. Agreement I. Acceptances 1. Appreciation Tokens 2. Comment Acceptance 3. Praise Upgrade II. Comment history III. Transfers 1. Reassignment 2. Return Example “Thanks; thank you; (smile)” “Thanks; it’s my favorite too.” “Really brings out the blue in my eyes, doesn’t it?” “I bought it for the trip to Arizona.” “My brother gave it to me.” “So is yours.” B. Non-agreement I. Scale down II. Question III. Non-acceptance 1. Disagreement 2. Qualification IV. No acknowledgment C. Other interpretations I. Request “It’s really quite old.” “Do you really think so?” “I hate it.” “It’s alright, but Len’s is nicer.” (silence) “You wanna borrow this one too?” 2.6 INTERLANGUAGE STUDIES ON COMPLIMENT RESPONSES: Different cultures have different ways of meaning and doing things with words. Compliment responses in particular are also speech acts that differ across cultures. Table 2.2 presents briefly the main findings of studies on differences in compliment responses between various languages and English. Table 2.2 Contrastive studies on compliment responses ( modified from Urano 20 00) Study Participants Language compared Methods Results Daikuhara About 50 (1986) Japanese L1 Japanese L1 American English Observation Only 5% of all compliment responses (CRs) in Japanese fell into acceptance Holmes (1988) L1 New Zealand English L1 Malay observation New Zealand English preferred to acceptances (61.1%) more than Malay (39.9%) Herbert Americans (1989) South Herbert & Africans Straight (1989) L1 American English L1 South African English Observation While 36.0% of all compliment responses in American data were acceptance, in South African English larger proportion of compliment responses (76.1%) were categorized as acceptance Chen (1993) L1 American English L1 Chinese Written DCT 95.73% of all compliment responses in Chinese were New Zealanders Malaysians 50 Americans 50 Chinese “rejecting”. Only 4.44% were acceptance Gajaseni (1994) 40 Americans 40 Thai L1 American English L1 Thai Oral DCT Americans used acceptance type responses significantly more often than Thai. Nelson, Al-Batal, & Echols (1996) 87 Americans 52 Syrians L1 American English L1 Arabic Interview, observation Arabic preferred acceptance (67%) more than American English (50%). Using Pomerantz’s taxonomy of compliment response strategies, these studies ended up with some interesting findings. First, Arabic and South African English tend to accept compliments and less likely to reject them than American English. Second, Asians are more likely to avoid accepting compliments but rather reject them compared with English. Due to the differences in compliment responses between various languages and English, pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by non-native speakers of English is desirable. 2.7 INTERLANGUAGE STUDIES ON PRAGMATIC TRANSFER IN COMPLIMENT RESPONSES A number of studies have been conducted to demonstrate the existence of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses from various languages to English. The findings of these studies are presented in Table 2.3. Table 2.3 Interlanguage studies on pragmatic transfer in compliment responses Study Focus Participants Methods Findings Chung- Evidence of hye Han pragmatic (n.d.) transfer from Korean to English 10 Korean female students 8 American female students Field notes The only sign of and pragmatic transfer was interviews found in the disagree type in the reject category. However, this didn't lead to miscommunication Jing Qu Differences in (2005) compliment responses between Chinese and American English Pragmatic 20 Chinese students of English major 20 Chinese students of non-English major Discourse Completion Task (DCT) There is a significant difference in compliment responses between Chinese and American English. Chinese learners of English reflect their L1 behavior to some extents transfer in compliment responses by Chinese learners of English. when responding English compliments Hessa Al Falasi (2007) The occurrence of pragmatic transfer from Arabic to English The effect of proficiency to pragmatic transfer Group 1: 10 American NS of English Group 2: 10 Emarati NS of English majors Group 3: 10 Emarati NS of non-English major Discourse Completion Task and interviews Emarati NNS of English brought about some L expressions and strategies in L2 production which results communication breakdowns Proficiency didn't play a role in producing targetlike compliment responses Tran Quynh Giao (2008) Pragmatic and discourse transfer of combination of compliment responses strategies in second language learning and usage. 20 NS of Australian Naturalized The compliment response English -role plays strategy combinations 20 NS of Vietnamese were found to be 20 Vietnamese transferred from learners of English Vietnamese into Vietnamese-English. Since most of these studies (except Tran’s study) based on Pomerantz’s taxonomy of compliment response strategies, the results of pragmatic transfer were not well-shown. Differences in each particular strategy, for example, were not presented. Tran’ s study (2008) investigated pragmatic transfer in compliment responses by Vietnamese non-native speakers of English in comparison with Australian native speakers of English. The results of Tran’s study showed the evidence of pragmatic transfer performed by Vietnamese learners of English. However, Tran (2008) focused on analyzing the content of compliment responses to investigate the pragmatic transfer in the combination of compliment response strategies. In this thesis, I also use Herbert’s taxonomy of compliment response strategies to classify compliment responses collected. However, beside differences in the content of compliment responses collected, I also focus on investigating the numeric differences in the frequency of compliment response strategies.