Tài liệu Giving and responding to compliments in english in validation and the devil wears prada

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING 2019 – 2021(2) HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY ENGLISH LANGUAGE M.A. THESIS GIVING AND RESPONDING TO COMPLIMENTS IN ENGLISH IN VALIDATION AND THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (Nghiên cứu cách khen và đáp lại lời khen bằng tiếng Anh trong phim Validation và The devil wears Prada) MAI THI THU DONG MAI THỊ THU DONG Field: English Language Code: 8.22.02.01 HANOI – 2021 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A. THESIS GIVING AND RESPONDING TO COMPLIMENTS IN ENGLISH IN VALIDATION AND THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (Nghiên cứu cách khen và đáp lại lời khen bằng tiếng Anh trong phim Validation và The devil wears Prada) MAI THI THU DONG Field: English Language Code: 8.22.02.01 SUPERVISOR: DR. TRAN THI LE DUNG HANOI – 2021 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “Giving and responding to compliments in English in Validation and The devil wears Prada” 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, 2021 Mai Thi Thu Dong Approved by SUPERVISOR Date: 10/01/2022 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has been a long journey for me to finish my thesis. There are also many people who walked along with me to support and motivate me during the time of doing the research. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ms. Tran Thi Le Dung, Ph. D., my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher. My thanks also go to all my lecturers at Hanoi Open University for their precious knowledge which lay the foundation for this study, my colleagues and many others whose support and encouragement help me to have this thesis accomplished. Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family and friends for their patience, endless love, and devotion. Whatever choices I have made, they have always stood by me and believed in me. I am immensely thankful for all the assistance they have given to me. ii ABSTRACT Every human living in this world is created as a social creature. He/she always needs other people in his/her society to fulfill his/her social needs. In order to meet his/her social needs as a social creature, people have to be able to communicate or interact with the society. To communicate, people need language which is one of tools of communication. The use of language can be found in conversations. Thus, conversation is a real form of language uses. It is an exchange of words, sentences and many other expressions that happen when two or more people are involved in talking about a certain thing in a certain situation. There are some many studies of famous theorists on kinds of speech act such as: making request, asking for permission, giving apology.... but not many of them focus on speech act of compliments. This is also the interesting topic attracting the author’s interest because it requires a great deal of pragmatic insight by speakers and therefore are often rich with data that reveal the orientation of language learners. Moreover, responding to compliments is vital to everyday communication. In this study, the author would like to investigate the way people give and respond to compliments in English by analyzing compliments and their responses in two films named Validation and The devil wears Prada. Strategies and some implications of giving and responding to compliments in English are concluded in the findings so that English learners and users may have a trustful material to study and use for their daily communications. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AR: Addresser AE: Addressee FTA: Face Threatening Act H: Hearer PS: Politeness Strategy S: Speaker UC: Unknown Character iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1 10 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 19 63 64 Table 5 Table 6 Table 7 Table 8 64 65 67 70 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality i Acknowledgements ii Abstract List of abbreviations iii iv List of tables v Table of contents vi Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1 1 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 2 1.3. Research questions 1.4. Methodology of the study 3 3 1.5. Scope of the study 1.6. Significance of the study 5 5 1.7. Structure of the study Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Previous studies 5 7 7 2.1.1 Previous studies in English 2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnamese 2.2 Review of theoretical background 2.2.1. Definition of Pragmatics. 2.2.2. Overview of Speech Acts 2.2.2.1. Definition of speech acts 2.2.2.2. Components of Speech acts 2.2.2.3. Classifications of Speech acts 2.2.3. Kinesics 2.2.3.1. Body language 2.2.3.2. Smiles 2.2.3.3. Eye contact 8 8 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 2.2.3.4 Touching 2.2.4. Politeness theory 2.2.4.1. Positive Politeness Strategies 2.2.4.2. Negative Politeness Strategies 12 12 13 16 vi 2.2.5. Compliments and Compliments’ Responses 2.2.5.1 Compliments 2.2.5.2. Topics of compliments 17 17 18 2.2.5.3. Compliments’ responses 2.2.6. Films 2.2.6.1. Synopsis of the Film Validation 21 21 2.2.6.2. Synopsis of the Film The devil wears Prada 22 2.3. Summary 23 Chapter 3: ANALYSIS AND SOME IMPLICATIONS OF24 COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLIMENTS’ RESPONSES IN THE FILMS VALIDATION AND THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 3.1 Analysis compliments and compliments’ responses of the Validation and The24 devil wears Prada 3.1.1. Analysis of Validation 3.1.2. Analysis of The devil wears Prada 24 43 3.1.3. Summary 3.2 Topics of compliments 3.2.1. Compliments on appearance 62 62 62 3.2.2. Compliments on skills or talents 63 3.2.3. Compliments on work accomplished or dedication 64 3.2.4. Compliments on possession 65 3.2.5. Summary 65 3.3. Giving compliment strategies and their response strategies 67 3.3.1. Politeness strategies in Validation 67 3.3.2. Politeness strategies in The devil wears Prada 70 3.3.3. Compliments 71 3.3.4. Compliment responses 72 3.3.4.1. Positive Politeness 73 3.3.4.2. Negative Politeness 74 3.4 Some implications for English learners when giving and responding to 74 compliments in English 3.4.1 What to compliment on 3.4.2 .How to give a compliment 3.4.3. How to respond to compliment 74 74 75 77 vii 3.4.4. Top compliment formulas Chapter 4: CONCLUSION 4.1. Recapitulation 77 79 79 4.2. Concluding remarks 79 4.3. Limitation of the research 4.4. Recommendations and suggestion for further studies 81 82 REFERENCES 83 APPENDIX 85 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Rationale Mankind needs to interact and communicate with others in their daily life. One of the most important tools for the communication required is language. Language is a vital tool to show what people feel and think, including spoken or silent language. When people communicate with others, they can know how successful their communication is. The communication is considered successful when the speaker is aware of what the meaning of utterances and the hearer is able to understand the intended meaning of speakers. However, when someone says something to another one, the one performs not only the certain purpose but also the act. The realization of act in certain social communication is called speech act. Speech act includes apologies, requests, complaints, compliments and responses to compliment. Holmes (in Paulson and Tucker, 2003) stated compliment as a speech act which explicitly or implicitly points out from the one to someone else. Someone usually praises the others for their good things; such as appearance, character and skills... In addition, Holmes (in Paulson and Tucker, 2003) announced that the main function of a compliment is affective and social rather than referential or informative. It explains that the reasons of misunderstanding and miscommunication failure as there are different norms of complimenting and responding to compliments. Compliment represents a social strategy in which the speaker tries to create good relationship with the hearer by expressing admiration or approval (Wolfson & Judd, 1983). Compliments are to make the one who is praised feels good. For example, two friends meet and one delivers a compliment: “Your hairstyle is great”. These simple expressions of compliments can create good feeling between them. Compliment itself has many forms, it is important for people to know on what topics people could deliver compliment. Wolfson in Wolfson and Judd (1983) said that what members of particular cultural group thank or apologize for, or compliment on, usually reflects values, as in performing these speech acts, people are often implicitly assessing the behavior, possessions, accomplishment, character, or appearance. Therefore, specific relationship between the speaker and the hearer also affects the choice of type of compliment considered appropriately. In other words, there is a basic or reason for the people to deliver compliment, it may be based on the appearance, possessions, skills, talents etc. 1 Film is a kind of source of data because it is a representation of real life. Allen and Gomery (1993) declared that the story of the film is a social phenomenon that shows the real life. The movie is considered as a life-image that is acted by the actors and actresses on the screen. Mostly, the story of the films is often taken from reality including the conversation. This study explores two American films since the films have the richness of data containing compliments and their responses. Validation and The devil wears Prada are films which are meaningful to watch. The sentences in general, the compliments in particular used are not too long and easy to be employed in everyday speaking. A study about compliment has been investigated by Choironi (2013) in her thesis named “Compliment Responses on Facebook Status Used by Foreigners: Gender Perspective.” She used Sociolinguistics approach as the way of the analysis. This research aimed to describe the distribution of the difference between male and female in giving compliment responses on Facebook status. From the study above, the author would like to understand deeply about compliments and their responses in the movies named Validation and The devil wears Prada that were published in 2007 and 2006 respectively. It is exciting to investigate the varieties of giving and responding compliments that occur in the society which is represented in films. Having different scope of linguistic from the previous study, the writer uses a Pragmatic approach as the scope of the study anh has chosen the topic “Giving and responding to compliments in English in Validation and The devil wears Prada” with the expectation of finding out the main topics of compliments and strategies that can be used when giving and responding to compliments in English through two famous American films: Validation (2007) and The devil wears Prada (2006). 1.2. Aims and objectives of the study 1.2.1. Aims of the study The study is conducted to help Vietnamese learners of English give and respond to compliments in English correctly and effectively. 1.2.2. Objectives of the study To achieve the aims above, the following objectives can be put forward: - To identify topics that the native speakers of English often compliment on the films Validation and The devil wears Prada. - To find out strategies of giving and responding to compliments in English on the films Validation and The devil wears Prada. 2 - To give Vietnamese learners of English some implications of using topics and strategies in giving and responding to compliments in English effectively. 1.3. Research questions This study intends to answer the following questions: 1. What do the native speakers of English often compliment in the films Validation and The devil wears Prada? 2. What are strategies of giving and responding to compliments in English in the films Validation and The devil wears Prada? 1.4. Methodology of the study The methods used in this study include: Research approach. The main aim of the study is to help Vietnamese learners of English give and respond to compliments in English correctly and effectively through pointing out main topics of compliments and strategies of giving and responding to compliments in English in two mentioned films. Therefore, to achieve the aims stated, quantitative and qualitative methods were applied in the study, which are mainly used to analyze compliments and their responses in the films. Major methods and supporting methods Describing and analyzing the compliment categories in English in two films The main method employed in this study is the descriptive method with quantitative and qualitative approach. Quantitative method can involve collecting quantitative information, involves gathering mass of raw data from different powerful sources. Qualitative method is used to describe and interpret the main features of English compliments and their responses. Analytical methods assist to the major method in this study. Analytical method will be used to analyze compliments that are available after carrying out the descriptive research. Data collection techniques For achieving the aims and objectives of the study with high reliability, two data collection techniques have been employed: selecting materials and collecting compliments and their responses from the two mentioned films. Data analysis techniques. The selected materials related to compliment categories in English played an important role in terms of supplement data for the study. In order to identify compliments and their responses, the author collected the data from two films called 3 Validation and The devil wears Prada. After that, the author describes, analyses and gives out the compliments’ topics and their strategies, as well as some implications for Vietnamese learners of giving compliments and their responses. Furthermore, Google search engine was used to select materials. Up to now, it has become the most popular and effective ways to find reliable and diverse sources of materials. From the films, data are gathered and all of them are then taken and analyzed. Data coding: In this research, the data coding is done in order to make the analysis of each datum easier to understand. The data coding is based on the order of the datum number. The number of data is as follows: V or D (V for Validation, D for The devil wears Prada) The number of each datum. The time when the compliment occurs. The following example is given to make it clear. V03/00:30:06 It means that the datum is from the film Validation with number 03. The compliment occurs in the hour of zero, minute of 30 and 6 second. D01/00:20:06 It means that the datum is from the film The devil wears Prada with number 01. The compliment occurs in the hour of zero, minute of 20 and 6 second. Technique of Analyzing Data In analyzing the collected data, some steps are conducted as follows: * Giving mark on compliments and their responses in the dialogues (Utterances typed bold are compliments, while the underlined utterances are compliments responses). *Analyzing the compliments’ topics, their responses and the politeness strategies applied by the speakers in delivering the compliments and the compliment responses by applying Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness strategies and Herbert’s theory of compliments responses strategy. *Classifying all the utterances of compliments, the compliment responses, and politeness strategies found in data analysis into a unit of discussion. 4 The analysis is arranged as follows: Data description It shows the dialogue between participants containing the compliments and their responses. Description of context This part presents the context of communication, the participants of the conversation, and the relationship between participants. Data analysis The analysis describes the way characters deliver compliments and the responses given by the hearer are discussed. Then, topics of compliments are also stated. Chaika’s theory of kinesics are used in analyzing the data. In addition, it also describes the analysis of the responses to the compliment from the addressee based on Herbert’s theory of compliment responses. Meanwhile, Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory used to analyze the politeness strategies is applied by the participants in delivering the compliments and in responding to the compliments. 1.5. Scope of the study - The data used in the study are collected from 2 films called Validation (2007) by Kurt Kuenne and The devil wears Prada (2006) by David Frankel. - The study only investigates compliments’ topics and strategies employed in the films Validation and The devil wears Prada - The information of giving and responding to compliments in English is also collected from the internet, M.A thesis, book… - The study only deals with topics of compliments and strategies given when speakers give and respond to compliments. 1.6. Significance of the study Theoretically, major topics of compliments in English in Validation and The devil wears Prada are highlighted and analyzed in great detail to add some certain theoretical background to study English. Practically, the findings of the study will help users of English in general and Vietnamese users in particular guarantee successful communication when using compliments in English. As a teacher of English, the author feels duty-bound to raise her students’ awareness of conventional behaviors in common situations. 1.7. Structural organization of the study 5 The thesis consists of 4 chapters as follow: Chapter 1 is the Introduction of the study which shows the reasons why the topic is chosen, what the research aims at as well as the scope, the significance and the structural organization of the study Chapter 2 is the Literature review and Theoretical background of the study. This chapter will give the brief review of related literature and theoretical background of every matter mentioned in the study. Chapter 3 is the Findings and Discussions. In this chapter, it presents and analyzes the collected data from clues in two films Validation and The devil wears Prada as well as gives the main topics of compliments in the two films. Besides that, the study offers some implications for Vietnamese learners of English in giving and responding to compliments in English. Chapter 4 is the Conclusion of the study which presents the recapitulation of the study, the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further study. 6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Previous studies 2.1.1. Previous studies in English Johnson (1979) says that in English speaking cultures, accepting a compliment by saying a single “Thank you” may be enough and at the same time regarded as the most adequate response. However, Pomerantz (1978) proclaims that this might not be the case in the American English setting. Her theory shows two conflicting principles that put pressure on an addressee when she /he is going to give a response to a compliment delivered. She guides that in any conversation, it is preferable to avoid disagreement and as such, a good compliment response should be one of acceptance and agreement. However, a response of this kind would correspond with one’s expression of self-praise, which may be considered negative by the compliment giver. Based on two common principles of Pomerantz (1978), Herbert (1986) showed three categories of compliment responses: Agreement, Non-agreement, and other interpretations. Manes and Wolfson (1981) analyzed 686 compliments using an ethnographic method. The researchers noted down on a notebook the compliments that they are used in daily life and they also asked the help of research assistants to collect data. They concluded that in American English, compliment as a speech act is highly formulaic on the syntactic and semantic levels in that three patterns are sufficient to account for 85% of the syntactic structure of the whole data and that two thirds of all the adjectival compliments make use of only five adjectives. Holmes (1986) reproduced Manes and Wolfson’s (1981) study and a datum of 517 compliments in New Zealand English was gathered using an ethnographic method. The number of syntactic patterns occurring regularly is high. The formulaic features of compliment were confirmed in this variety of English. The three most frequent syntactic patterns reported by Manes and Wolfson account for 70% of Holmes’ New Zealand data. Six adjectives were used with high frequency and accounted for about two thirds of all the adjectives used. However, Holmes also noted the occurrence of the distinctively New Zealand syntactic variants. Mojica (2002) analyzed 270 compliments ethnographically with the assistance of students. Her research agenda is to find out how Philippine college students give and respond to compliments using Filipino language. Mojica concluded that 7 Filipino compliments were formulaic in nature in that a limited set of syntactic patterns and some positively-valued adjectives were frequently used to give compliments. Herbert, R.K. (1989) built a collection of compliments and compliment responses from 40 American feature films and compared with the research results reported by Manes and Wolfson (1981). He discovers that the film data is in correspondent fairly closely with the naturally-occurring data from the pragmalinguistic perspective, even though not so in terms of socio-pragmatics. The overall distribution of syntactic patterns in compliments is the same to the one reported by Manes and Wolfson. Jucker (2009)- the philological researcher collects data from fictional material, such as short stories, novels and movies, after that takes note of all the compliments and compliment responses that can be found. 2.1.2. Previous studies in Vietnamese Loan, Nguyen (2010) in “A Vietnamese-English Cross- Cultural Study of Positive Politeness and Negative Politeness in Complimenting” shows the use of Positive Politeness and Negative Politeness strategies in complimenting by English native speakers and Vietnamese ones. Canh, Truong (2010) in “Giving and Receiving Compliments-A CrossCultural Study in English and Vietnamese” studies how people give and receive compliments in Australian English and in Vietnamese. In “Về cách thức khen và tiếp nhận lời khen trong phát ngôn Việt-Mỹ”, Kieu Oanh Ho (2000) did a research on complimenting and responding compliments between the Vietnamese and American. In short, the above studies investigate compliments and compliments’ responses, but they only focus on cultural differences in English and Vietnamese or other languages. In this study, the author would like to investigate English compliments and their responses through two films Validation and The evil wears Prada and suggest ways of giving and responding to compliments in English in detail. 2.2. Review of theoretical background 2.2.1. Definition of Pragmatics. Pragmatics is one of the branches of linguistic study which focuses on meaning utterances. Leech (1983) stated that pragmatics can be defined as the study of how the utterances have meaning in certain situation. It means that Pragmatics is 8 concerned with the meaning of utterance which the meaning depends on the situation where the utterance happens. According to Yule (2006), Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning. This kind of study necessary involves the interpretation of what the speaker means in particular context and how the context influences what is said. It also relates to a consideration of how the speaker organizes what she or he will like to say in appropriate way to someone else, where, when and what the circumstances the speech act takes place. Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that Pragmatics is a study which discusses a meaning of language by concerning the relation between language and context. It means that the interaction between the context and language becomes the main focus in Pragmatic. 2.2.2. Overview of speech acts 2.2.2.1. Definition of speech acts The British philosopher Austin (1962) was the first one to define the term “speech acts” and its theory, then “speech acts” were further developed by other theorists; such as Searle (1969, 1976), Leach (1983), Levinson (1983), Yule (1996,1997). They all agree that there is a close connect between speech acts and language functions. Austin (1962) describes many functions performed by utterances as part of interpersonal communication. Moreover, he shows that many utterances do not contain information, yet are similar to actions. They are “words that do things” in the world and in saying something the speaker does something. Besides, Austin (1960) firstly used the norm “speech acts to refer to an utterance” and the “total situation in which the utterance is issued”. Sharing with Austin’s ideas, Richards, Platt, J. and Platt, H. (1992) defines, “speech acts is an utterance as a functional unit in communication”. Also, Yule (1996) states, “Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts”. These speech acts are commonly given such specific labels as apologizing, complaining, complimenting, inviting, promising or requesting etc. Thus, their common assumption is that when conversing people use grammatical and lexical units not only to produce utterances, but also to perform 9 actions. These speech acts, considered as minimal units of human communication, are performed in actual situations of language use – as Searle (1969) says, “…. Speech acts…are the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication”. 2.2.2.2. Components of Speech acts According to Austin’s theory (1962), the act is performed under any of the three forces; what we say has three kinds of meaning called three components; namely, locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. Locutionary Force: is what produces the act of “saying something”, i.e., the act of uttering a certain sentence with a meaning. Illocutionary Force: In performing a locutionary act, we may also perform such an act as questioning, promising, warning, ordering, etc. Thus, the words have the force of a question a promising, a warning, an ordering, etc. Austin made a distinction between a locutionary act and an illocutionary act as one between the act of saying and the act in saying something, respectively. The latter is the inherent function of the speech act, which might be established by simply looking at the act itself in relation to existing belief. For example, “I’ll help you” could be considered to be a promise if one believed that the hearer would be pleased at the news. Perlocutionary Force: is one that produces the consequential effects on the speaker or hearer’s feelings, thoughts or actions. For example, the acts of coming of the speaker and the expectation of the hearer for the speaker to come will be the effects of the promise “I’ll come”. 2.2.2.3. Classifications of Speech Act There are various kinds of speech acts; however, John Searle (1976) classifies them into five main types, which is highly appreciated. Table 1: Classifications of Speech Act 1 2 Explanation Paradigm cases Example Representatives - commit a speaker to - asserting, stating, - I am a good the truth of an concluding, boasting, doctor expressed describing, - Bao was an proposition suggesting accountant. Commissives -commit a speaker to promising, - I'll see you some future action pledging, tonight. threatening, vowing, - I will kill you. offering 10