Tài liệu Một điển cứu về sự ngừng nghỉ diễn ngôn trong hai bài diễn văn nhậm chức năm 2013 của tổng thống barack obama và 2011 của thủ tướng nguyễn tấn dũng

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER A CASE STUDY OF DISCOURSE PAUSE USED IN 2013 INAUGURAL SPEECH BY THE U.S PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AND IN 2011 INAUGURAL SPEECH BY THE VIETNAMESE PRIME MINISTER NGUYEN TAN DUNG. (FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS) Supervisor: Ngô Hữu Hoàng, PhD. Student: Bùi Thị Hằng Nga Course: QH2010.F1.E15 HÀ NỘI - 2014 ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP MỘT ĐIỂN CỨU VỀ SỰ NGỪNG NGHỈ DIỄN NGÔN TRONG HAI BÀI DIỄN VĂN NHẬM CHỨC NĂM 2013 CỦA TỔNG THỐNG BARACK OBAMA VÀ 2011 CỦA THỦ TƯỚNG NGUYỄN TẤN DŨNG. (XÉT TỪ GÓC ĐỘ DỤNG HỌC GIAO VĂN HÓA) Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Ts. Ngô Hữu Hoàng Sinh viên: Bùi Thị Hằng Nga Khóa: QH2010.F1.E15 HÀ NỘI - 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express a special thanks to all of my teachers who gave me a general background knowledge about walk of life, researching method and cross-culture, especially PhD. Ngô Hữu Hoàng who is adviser, for helping and coaching me by answering all my questions concerning my topic. Second, I would also like to thanks to all of my friends who are always standing by my side no matter what happen, especially Ms. Trường- ―my granddaughter in brackets‖ and Ms. Lan who gave me her reliability and encouragement. Finally, I want to thank my family members who were always my supports in the moment when there was no one to answer my queries. No word can express my deepest gratefulness to my dad and my mom who have brought me up with love and affections. I also want to thank to my sister, and brother who helped me with housework and encouraged me in studying. Bùi Thị Hằng Nga i ABSTRACT The thesis was designed as a comparative and exploratory study of the use of pause in American and Vietnamese political speeches with two major purposes: (1) to investigate the ways discourse pause used in political speeches, (2) to demonstrate the effects of pause in the politician‘s presentations, (3) to explain briefly and subjectively the reasons why there were differences in using pause in two political culture. The selected subject who is representative to the U.S was the president Barack Obama while the Vietnamese one was the prime minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng. Data for this study were collected from two videos recording the two politician‘s inaugural ceremonies. The main method applied to conduct this thesis was observation. To draw on the major similarities and differences between two politicians in using pause, the researcher observed the videos and counted the numbers of pauses and their durations. The durations were divided into three groups: short (1-3 seconds), medium (4-7 seconds), long ( >8 seconds). The collected data were analyzed in terms of the frequency of pauses, the durations of pause, and the effects of pauses. The results show that Barack Obama used pause more frequently than Nguyễn Tấn Dũng did. The amount of time he paused was also longer than that of Nguyễn Tấn Dũng. The reactions of the audiences in each case were also different. Yelling and, clapping hands were generally common reactions the audiences had each time Obama used silence while quietness and hand-clapping at the end of the speech were the responses of the Vietnamsese audiences. The reasons why two politicians used pauses so differently were subjectively concluded to be the atmosphere, the cultural norms: high-context culture and low-context culture, and the supported technology by the reseacher. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................i ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................ii TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................iii LIST OF TABLES....................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION I. Rationale for the study..................................................................................1 II. Aims and objectives.......................................................................................2 III. Significance of the study................................................................................3 IV. Scope of the study...........................................................................................3 V. Organization...................................................................................................4 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND...............................................5 1.1. Discourse.........................................................................................................5 1.2. Non-verbal communication...........................................................................7 1.2.1. Paralanguage...................................................................................................8 1.2.2. Pause/Silence in Discourse............................................................................10 1.2.2.1. Definition and classification...............................................................10 1.2.2.2. Pause functions...................................................................................11 1.2.3. Pauses situations in monologue.....................................................................13 1.3. Low context culture and high context culture...........................................15 1.3.1. Definition and comparisons...........................................................................15 1.3.2. High-context and low-context culture in relationship with pauses in discourse...................................................................................................................20 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY.........................................................................22 2.1. Selection of subject...........................................................................................22 2.2. Research instrument........................................................................................23 2.3. Procedures of data collection..........................................................................23 2.4. Procedures of data analysis.............................................................................24 CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY...................................................................................26 iii 3.1. Frequency of pauses and its duration............................................................26 3.2. Pause effects......................................................................................................30 3.3. The reasons of the difference in using pauses of two politicians.................35 3.3.1. The difference in atmosphere..........................................................................35 3.3.2. Cultural norm..................................................................................................37 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION...............................................................................39 I. Summary of findings....................................................................................39 II. Limitation.....................................................................................................40 III. Suggestions for further study......................................................................40 REFERENCES........................................................................................................41 APPENDIX..............................................................................................................45 iv LIST OF TABLES AND IMAGES 1. List of tables Table 1 2 2. Name Frequency of pauses and its duration Summarized effects of pause in each case Page number 27 31 List of images Image 1 Name The reactions of audiences during the time Obama used pause Page number 33 2 Obama‘s emotion 35 3 The overall view of Obama‘s ceremony 36 4 The Vietnamese parliamentary auditorium. 37 5 Teleprompter- a display device that prompts the 38 person speaking with an electronic visual text of a speech or script. v INTRODUCTION I. RATIONALE Pause in discourse across cultures is catalogued as one of the branches of paralanguage which play an important role in communication. It is undoubted that there is strong power in pausing in communication. Thus, everyone should pay more attendance to discourse pause. For example, someone else may not have finished their thought and you may not want to cut them off. Cutting someone off too soon may cause you to miss some important information to be shared. Another reason to pause is to avoid making mistakes during speaking that are not fully formulated in your mind. When in a heated discussion, pausing can help avoid overreacting or exacerbating a situation. Pausing can give you an opportunity in person to consider the body language and other signals being given by those around you. If you are giving a presentation, providing training or an explanation of important information, pausing can help your audience keep up with you and have time to absorb important details. Pause exists in all social interactions in any culture; however, the way people use pauses is not the same in different language and cultures. The thesis is conducted to make this clearer. Besides, the globalization brings us a chance to communicate more widely not only in such fields as economics, society and culture but also in politics. Many conferences are now being held with the participants of politicians from many countries-different cultures. What will happen if a politician from a country uses pause in his/ her speech? The other politicians will be surprised meaninglessly or understand that they need to make some responses to the speaker showing their emotions or their willingness of listening. Moreover, the relationships between Vietnam and the western countries are enhanced. There are now more official visits from the delegates of these countries to our country, particularly the United States. Moreover, the selected subjects are famous people, particularly Barack Obama- the first black president of the United States. With his background, Barack Obama is considered as a multi-cultural person. Furthermore, Barack 6 Obama is believed as ―a gifted speaker who has something to teach all leaders in business and politics, regardless of their political opinions‖ by the contributor Carmine Gallo in his 2012 essay in Forbes Magazine named ― Barack Obama-A master class in public speaking‖. Carmine Gallo also commented that Obama was an expert in using voice. He slowed it down, lowered or loudened it, and especially paused for impact (Gallo, 2012). After watching several speeches conducted by Barack Obama, the researcher recognized that one of the special features of his all speeches, particularly in the 2013 inaugural speech, was the use of pause with clear purposes. This, to some extents, illustrated the specific features of American culture and society. Additionally, learning from the famous people like Barack Obama and Nguyễn Tấn Dũng is much easier than learning from a book All in all, considering the benefits of using pause effectively as well as anticipating the consequences of lacking understanding of it in communication in general, and in politics in particular, the researcher wants to conduct a study about this field not only to help people, particularly students, seize the benefits of using pause in communicating and avoid the misunderstanding, but also to bring about the differences of using discourse pause in two culture and political background. II. AIMS OF THE STUDY As stated in the above part, the researcher conducts this study to illustrate the similarities and differences regarding political culture in using discourse pauses by Barack Obama in comparison with Nguyễn Tấn Dũng. From this main purposes, the author has had these research questions: - What is the way Barack Obama used discourse pause in his 2013 inaugural speech? - What is the way Nguyễn Tấn Dũng used discourse pause in his 2011 inaugural speech? - To what extents their discourse pauses affect the audiences? 7 - What can cause the differences in using discourse pause of two politicians? III. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This thesis helps the researcher gain more knowledge about not only culture but also the use of discourse in cultures. The study also evokes the desire of learning and experiencing from the researcher. Since then, the researcher has an opportunity to broaden her knowledge about cultures in the world, especially American and Vietnamese cultures which will definitely be a vital knowledge for her in the future when globalization is more and more prevalent. The recognition of similarities and differences between discourse and culture will help the researcher find out the way of communicating properly and appropriately to improve her communication skills. As to students, the thesis may provide a fresh and unique approach about culture in general, and discourse pause in particular. Students will find it as an interesting way to absorb the knowledge as well as achieve the extra information which is out of the text book. Regarding the politicians, the study may bring about a new view about presentation. Politicians may have a different opinion about the way to deliver a speech as well as be aware of the effects of non-verbal communication and discourse pauses. IV. SCOPE OF THE STUDY The thesis only focuses on pause which is one of the branches of paralanguage and its surrounding issues in the political culture, not on all the categories of non-verbal communication. The researcher just concentrates on analyzing the two inaugural speeches of the two politicians: Barack Obama and Nguyễn Tấn Dũng as objects of the study. The researcher bases on the perspective of cross-cultural pragmatics to evaluate the similarities and differences regarding political culture in using discourse pauses by Barack Obama in comparison with Nguyễn Tấn Dũng. The 8 researcher also uses the theoretical background about high-context and lowcontext culture to assess the way the politicians used pauses. V. ORGANIZATION The study consists of three main parts: - Introduction, which provides the rationale, scope, aims, and methods of the study. - Development, which covers three chapters:  Chapter 1: Theoretical Background. This chapter provides the knowledge about non-verbal communication, paralanguage, discourse, pause, high-context and low-context culture.  Chapter 2: Methodology. In this chapter, the researcher presents the definition of the methods used to conduct the thesis. The steps to collect the data and analyze the data are described clearly in this chapter.  Chapter 3: The study. The differences in using pauses between two politicians, pauses effects and the reasons for the differences are clarified in this chapter.  Chapter 4: Conclusion. In this chapter, the researcher summarizes the findings, points out the limitations of the thesis, and gives the suggestions for further research offered. 9 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Discourse. Up to now, discourse remained to be the subject of heated debates. Discourse is considered as a key notion in a lot of current works in the social science and its meaning varies according to the particular theorists. For example, in the book called ― A dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics‖, Crystal argued that discourse is often used to refer to a stretch of language- spoken and writtenin context ( Crystal, 1997). Besides, among many social theorists, notably poststructuralist social philosophers, Foucault believed that discourse is involved in socially and historically situated domains of knowledge or ways of interpreting the world ( Foucault, 1980). However, there are two main notions of discourse which are popularly used to talk about language in context. - Discourse is defined as “language in its social context, as it is used to carry out the social and intellectual life of a community” (Mercer, 1995, p. 79). This meaning of discourse emphasizes the importance of looking at language in context and usually involves an analysis of actual stretches of spoken and written language, often referred to as ‗texts‘. - Discourse is regarded as “different ways of structuring areas of knowledge and social practice” (Fairclough, 1992). It is not used to refer to particular texts, but rather to explain how certain ideas and values are embodied in the communications of a community or society. Discourse in this sense cannot be observed or recorded but is rather a theory of social reality. It is commonly used in analyses of political influence and social power. Discourse includes both verbal communication and non-verbal communication. In this thesis, the researcher concentrates on discourse pause which is a minor branch of paralanguage in non-verbal communication. Besides, discourse is discovered to have five main elements which are illustrated below: 10 - Purpose: the foundation of the discourse. What is the aim of a piece of writing or a stretch of language? For example they use it to explain, to narrate, to inform, to persuade, to entertain. - Speaker: who will be the person who tells the story or says the stretch of language? - Audience: who will be the person who receive the information or the story? - Form: how is the information delivered? - Content: what is the actual information be told? To make a successful conversation, people should consider all of these elements of discourse. Additionally, intonation is also considered as one of the elements of discourse. The term intonation refers to a mean of conveying information in speech which is independent of the words and their sounds. Central to intonation is the modulation of pitch, and intonation is often thought of as the use of pitch over the domain of the utterance. However, the patterning of pitch in speech is so closely bound to patterns of timing and loudness, and sometimes voice quality, that we cannot consider pitch in isolation from these other dimensions. The interaction of intonation and stress - the patterns of relative prominence which characterize an utterance - is particularly close in many languages, including English. For those who prefer to reserve ‗intonation‘ for pitch effects in speech, the word ‗prosody‘ is convenient as a more general term to include patterns of pitch, timing, loudness, and (sometimes) voice quality (Nolan, 2006). Intonation is used to carry a variety of different kinds of information. It signals grammatical structure, though not in a one-to-one way; whilst the end of a complete intonation pattern will normally coincide with the end of a grammatical structure such as a sentence or clause, even quite major grammatical boundaries may lack intonation marking, particularly if the speech is fast. Intonation can reflect the information structure of an utterance, highlighting constituents of importance. Intonation can particularly indicate discourse 11 function; for instance most people are aware that saying ― this is John‘s bag‖ with one kind of intonation as a statement, but with another as a question. Intonation can be used by a speaker to convey an attitude such as friendliness, enthusiasm, or hostility; and listeners can use intonation-related phenomena in the voice to make inferences about a speaker‘s state, including excitement, depression, and tiredness (Nolan, 2006). For example, when someone is asked ― how is this dress?‖ and he/ she answer: ―L-O-V-E-L-Y‖ with a longer sound which means he/ she doesn‘t like this dress. 1.2. Non-verbal communication Communication is perceived as the transfer of information, ideas and emotions from one person to another. People spend about 75% of walking hours sharing the knowledge, thought, and ideas to others. However, it seems that most of us fail to realize that a great deal of our communication is of a non-verbal form. The fact remains that there has been a substantial soar in research and interest in the phenomena of nonverbal communication during the decade. In its narrow and accurate sense, nonverbal behavior refers to actions as distinct from speech. Nonverbal elements consist of facial expression, paralanguage, hand and arm gestures, postures, positions, and various movements of the body or the legs and feet. It may also include the way we wear our clothes or the silence we keep. Albert Mehrabian (1972) once states in his book, namely Nonverbal communication, that nonverbal communication is the act of imparting or interchanging thoughts, opinions, or information without the use of spoken words. Non-verbal communication is used as a key variable to determine people‘s attitudes, values, and beliefs. For example, an observer watching a focus group will pay special attention to the nonverbal cues of group interaction, such as body language, facial expressions, and eyes contact, to identify group member‘s true feelings about an issue.( Mehranbian, 1972) According to The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (2005), nonverbal communication is defined as communication without the use of spoken language. 12 In addition, Wikipedia‘s editors indicate that nonverbal communication is usually understood as the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless messages. Nonverbal communication can be illustrated through gestures and touch, by body language or posture, by facial expressions and eyes contact. In addition, it can be communicate through object communication such as clothing, hairstyles or even architecture, symbols and inforgraphics. Speech contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, emotion and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress ( Wikipedia, 2012). Nguyen Quang (2008) also defines nonverbal communication as all the constituents of communication which are not verbally coded, but vocally and/or non-vocally channeled. It includes paralanguage (nonverbal- vocal) such as: speed, volume, vocal flow, and extra- language such as gestures, postures, facial expressions, object language such as clothes, jewelry, and environmental language as conversational distance, setting. The proverb ― Actions speak louder than words‖ underscores the importance of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is especially significant in cross- cultural situation; however people in different culture adopt different nonverbal behaviors. The lack of knowledge about nonverbal communication can cause misunderstandings or culture shock. It seems that nonverbal communication differences account for typical difficulties in communication. 1.2.1. Paralanguage Paralanguage refers to the vocal and nonverbal elements of communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously, and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, the intonation of the speech. Sometimes, the definition is restricted to vocally- produced sounds. The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistic.(Wikipedia) 13 The term ― paralanguage‖ is sometimes used as a cover term for body language, which is not necessarily tied to speech, and paralinguistic phenomena in speech, the latter are phenomena that can be observed in speech but that do not belong to the arbitrary conventional code of language. As I illustrated above, paralanguage is part of the nonverbal communication and convey emotions and attitudes. It may not only be expressed consciously or unconsciously but also include vocalizations such as hissing, hushing, and whistling, as well as speech modifications such as quality of voice or hesitations and speed in talking. Some examples of paralanguage are laughing, crying, whispering, snoring, sucking, sneezing, sighing, etc. Tone of voice plays a fundamental role in telephone interactions (Wikipedia) Stephen P. Robbins (1998) states in their book, called Organization Behavior: Concepts, Controversies, Applications, that paralanguage is communication that goes beyond the specific spoken words. It includes pitch, amplitude, rate, and voice quality of speech. Paralanguage reminds us that people convey their feelings not only in what they, but also in how they say it (Robbins, 1998). It can come to conclude that the paralinguistic properties of speech play an important role in human speech communication. According to Wikipedia, there are no utterances or speech signals that lack paralinguistic properties, since speech requires the presence of a voice that can be modulated. This voice must have some properties, and all the properties of a voice as such are paralinguistic. However, the distinction between linguistics and paralinguistic applies not only to speech but to writing and sign language as well, and it is not bound to any sensory modality. Even vocal language has some paralinguistic as well as linguistic properties that can be seen and even felt.( Wikipedia). In text-only communication such as email, chatting rooms and instant messaging, paralinguistic elements can be displayed by emoticons, font and color choices, capitalization and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters. 14 Nonetheless, paralanguage in written communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, even sometimes leading to misunderstandings. 1.2.2. Pause/ Silence 1.2.2.1. Definition and classification According to Clark (1996), pauses are powerful cues or what is happening in a conversation. To use them as a basic for analyzing culture-specific behavior, we first have to check carefully what purposes pauses may serve in conversations and how the usage differs across cultures. As we want to build a computational model for American English and Vietnamese, those two cultures are of special interest. According to a study about ―Pausing strategies in discourse in Dutch‖ conducted by Monique E. van Donzel and Florien J. Koopmans-van Beinum, there are basically three different kinds of pausing used by the speakers, which are operationalized in the following way. - ―Silent pauses:- breathing pauses included, characterised by a total absence of speech. A pause was labeled as a silent pause if its duration was at least 150 msec. This minimal length was to insure that closure times of stop consonants were not included. In case the closure time occasionally did exceed 150 msec, it was obviously not marked as a silent pause. - Filled pauses. A hesitation sound (`eeh') was labeled as a filled pause. These elements in the discourse do not have any lexical meaning, but they can indicate that the speaker needs time to plan the continuation of his/her telling, that he/she wants to avoid a silence, or that he/she wants to `hold the floor'. Silences preceding and/or following the hesitation sound were marked as 'silence to a filled pause' (thus not as a silent pause), even if they were shorter than 150 msec. - Lengthening. A speaker can use lengthening as a planning tool by sustaining a particular vowel or consonant within certain words. As 15 a first step the words containing lengthening were determined by ear by the first author, and in a later stage checked by the second author. Two kinds of lengthening were observed: a schwa added after the last consonant of the word, and the lengthening of a wordinternal vowel or a consonant.”(Donzel & Beinum, 1999) However, in this thesis, the researcher only concentrates on silent pauses which are mostly used by the two politicians in their speeches. 1.2.2.2. Pause functions In the book of Conversational organization- Interaction between speakers and hearers, Charles Goodwin (1981) describes his research on gaze behavior and manipulation. According to Goodwin, gaze is used to manage turn talking and to signal understanding or attentiveness. If attention signals of the hearer are missing, pause are used by the speaker to regain attention. In this case the duration of the pause is dependent from the nonverbal signal of the hearer. Pause/ Silence in speech can be used for the following purposes:  Cognitive processing  Control mechanism  Acceptance/ refusal  Turn taking (Goodwin, 1981) It was stated in the book ―The Significance of Pauses in Spontaneous Speech‖, conducted by Rochester (1973) that pauses are also considered to have three main functions which are signaling some word choices, reflecting decisions at major constituent boundaries, and sematic decision-making. The matter of content and the function of pauses for the speaker are examined. Until that point, the speaker is simply a language generator which pauses either in the course of normal decision-making operations or because of disruptions in those operations. However, the speaker can be seen as a participant in the social act of speech. He 16 also claimed that ―Pause and other phenomena of spontaneous speech should be functionally related to changes in the interpersonal situation and/ or to changes in the responsiveness of the speaker, given a constant interpersonal situation‖ (Rochester, 1973). In addition, according to Rochester, the functional significance of pauses is considered in terms of cognitive affective-state, and social interaction variables. Two sorts of social interaction variables are found to influence pauses in spontaneous speech:  Mediating variables.  Control variables. In his work, pauses in speech can either be used as control mechanism to control the flow of the conversation, as well as for cognitive processes, and decision making (Rochester, 1973). According to the book ―Politeness: Some universals in language use” written by Brown and Levinson (1987), politeness strategies are constituted as an aspect of social interaction. The authors describe some parallelisms in the linguistic construction of utterances with which people express themselves in different languages and cultures. One motive of these parallels is isolatedpoliteness. They claim the existence of conversational structure sequences and with it the intentional usage of pauses for politeness purposes. A careful located pause can on the one hand mean acceptance and on the other hand refusal. Moreover, the other common usage of pauses in conversations is to initiate turntaking behavior. It is one of the basic mechanisms in all types of dialogues and that is also a crucial mechanism in human system interaction. Brown and Levinson also give an example about pause showing acceptance. A: Do you sing? W: (silence) A: Hooray! Give us a song. 17 In contrast, pause in this case can also be understood as a polite refusal if the conversers are not observant. Or in a situation, where A asks B for a favor and B falls into silence, pause is considered as a polite refusal. Therefore, pause can be used as a polite refusal or acceptance. However, the interpretation of the pause remains a challenge to the speakers/ listeners. Sometimes, pauses can cause the misunderstanding between the listeners and the speakers. 1.2.3. Pauses situations in monologue There are a lot of cases that people can use pause to make their speeches successful. For example, in the speech ― I have a dream‖ in 1963, Martin Luther King Junior used pauses effectively and made it as one of his most famous speeches. Let‘s look at the way he used pauses which were analyzed by Susan Dugdale in her essay ― Quick and Easy Tips for Using Pauses‖ in the magazine Write out loud. “This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning,” (Pause for breath and for emphasis. He was starting to quote something important. Give the audience time to anticipate the new meaning.) "My country,” (Pause, brief-just enough to underline the importance of 'my country') “tis of thee,” (Pause, brief- just enough to underline 'thee') “sweet land of liberty,” (Pause- brief to underline 'liberty') “of thee I sing.” (Pause for breath and to give the audience time to take in the whole meaning of the previous phrases.) “Land where my fathers died,” 18