ĐÒI lại AI một cái gì đó một NGHIÊN cứu về TIẾNG ANH của NGƯỜI VIỆT học TIẾNG ANH và NGƯỜI bản NGỮ

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Chapter one: Introduction

1.1. Rationale of the study

In the past few decades we have witnessed a big change in language teaching and learning.
That is the appearance of ‘communicative approach’ to language teaching and learning, which
puts a strong emphasis on master of language use. That is to say, language is viewed as a
means of communication and uses of language play a central part in language teaching and
learning (Brumfit and Johnson 1979). Focus on learners’ language use also means that
communicative approach takes priority over pragmatic competence, one of the four sectors of
communicative competence (Hymes 1972 in Brumfit and Johnson 1979). Much research on
pragmatic competence on the basis of diverse speech acts and speech act sets shows that
pragmatic competence plays a decisive role in learners’ communicative competence
development because it results in appropriateness and effectiveness in interactions, the goal in
learning a second or foreign language. Second or foreign language learners (L2 learners) can
approximate native speakers only when they master rules of language use that underline the
ability to use language in contextually appropriate and effective ways. Given these facts, L2
learners in classroom setting should be pragmatically aware and pragmatically competent.
However, in the language learning setting in Vietnam learners’ pragmatic competence seems
to be given less consideration than other aspects of language teaching. This can be manifested
through the examination of some types of speech acts taught in some teaching materials in
Vietnamese junior high schools. Let’s take some examples. In grade 7 English coursebook
some speech acts such as requests, gratitude, invitations, refusals, complaints or compliments
are introduced to learners, and they are taught along with other language items. However, the
matter lies in the fact that they are paid less attention to while they must have got much focus
on. Furthermore, the teacher, when teaching these types of speech acts, only introduces the
semantic formulas of these speech acts, then asks learners to try to make utterances basing on
the formulas. For example, in teaching invitations and responses in unit 6 on pages 66 and 67,
the teacher writes on the board the formulas such as Would you like to…? and Yes, I’d love

to… for agreement and I’m sorry. I can’t or Yes, I’d love to but… for refusal. The learners are
then asked to make a similar dialogue to the previous one they have been taught. This type of
teaching leads to the result that learners use only one expression in all interactional contexts,
and again this results in the learners’ sociopragmatic errors. For instance, in the classroom
learners were asked to work in pairs and in turn to practice giving invitations such as going to
the movies or coming home for lunch and replying to the invitations. However, when they

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came to the teacher’s home for joy, the teacher offered them some candy, of course, in
Vietnamese. One of the learners replied with an English utterance I’m sorry. I can’t. This
proves that learners with little L2 proficiency can perform a speech act communicatively, but
they cannot do it in a native-like manner. What is more, the status and power relationships
holding between speaker and hearer are usually ignored or rarely referred to in the
coursebook. For instance, in unit 3 on page 30 the learners are asked to practice making
complaints through exclamations such as What an expensive dress! But they do not know
whom they make the utterance with and in which situations they should make an utterance
like that. This causes them to make both sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic errors when
they interact in real life situations. In other words, pragmatic awareness is not taken account in
the coursebook.

As mentioned above, learning a foreign language is not only simply to acquire the linguistic
resources – phonological, lexical, and grammatical systems but also to learn how to
understand and convey pragmatic meaning and achieve successful communication in the
target language. It is the fact that the later has been the focus of much research on learner
language

recently.

L2 learners usually acquire the developing system that is neither that of
their native language nor that of the target language. Learners’ different developing systems of

the native language, of the target language, and of the learner language cause so much
difficulty in learners’ L2 acquisition in general and the acquisition of the pragmatic ability in
particular. Furthermore, the cultural differences of learners’ native language and the target
language are also the cause of pragmatic failure. The study of learner language or
interlanguage (ILP) can be useful in helping learners’ progress through the developmental
stages. Teachers, in particular, need to understand the domain of ILP to modify their teaching
practices to facilitate pragmatic development. In the present study learner language is
investigated through the speech act of asking for something back.

So far so many speech act sets such as requests, apologies, refusals, invitations, complaints,
compliments, greetings, gratitude, etc have been studied on both cross-cultural and
interlanguage pragmatics perspective but not the act of asking something back. Hence, the
speech act of asking for something back is chosen for this study for the reason that it has never
been investigated before though it occurs regularly in everyday conversations. Moreover, it
differs from other types of speech acts in the sense that it seems to require the speakers to use
many different communicative strategies to achieve the last goal, namely getting something
back from the addresses. Sometimes, the speech act has to be repeated many times and in each
time a new strategy may have to be used, and then the goal can be achieved successfully.

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Saying these things is to see that an investigation on the speech act can be hopeful to discover
interesting things. What is more, it is also very useful to find how learners learn to perform the
speech act, and to what extent and in what ways learners perform the speech act in the L2
differently from native speakers of the target language. From the findings of these, teachers
then can have appropriate approaches to the teaching of language functions.

1.2. Aims of the study

The study aims to find out if Vietnamese learners and native speakers differ in realizing the
speech act of asking for something back in the situations studied and if so, why they are

different.

1.3. Scope of the study

The study focuses on the speech act of asking for something back performed by Vietnamese
learners of English and then compares it with that performed by English native speakers to see
the similarities and differences between the two groups. The term ‘speech act’ here is used to
refer to the illocutionary act, that is, the study concentrates on illocutionary meaning. In
addition, the study pays attention to learner production rather than learner perception or
comprehension.

What is more, because of the size of the study, the matter of learners’
pragmatic competence development also lies outside the scope of the study. Since we did not
collect data by recording or interview, the verbal features such as intonation, stress were not
discussed in the thesis either.


1.4. Organization of the study
The present study consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 concerns with the rationale of the study,
that is, why the subject matter is chosen to be studied. It also includes the aims, scope, and
organization of the study. Chapter 2 refers to some fundamental theories and concepts of
speech acts, politeness, pragmatics, and interlanguage pragmatics. Chapter 3 deals with
methods of data collection and data analysis. Chapter 4 reports the results of the study, basing
on the collected data and discusses some issues on learners’ language use, basing on the
results reported. Chapter 5 provides some concluding remarks drawn from the results of the
study, some implications for teaching language functions, and limitations of the study.


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Chapter two: Literature review

2.1. Speech act theory
2.1.1. Austin and Searle’s theory of speech acts

For a long time, the studying object of linguistics was mainly affirmative sentences, or
sometimes called statements, assertions. This was because, semantically, these sentences
could be all tested for their truth or falsity. Other sentences such as Could you tell me what
time it is?, I promise I’ll be more careful next time, or I bet you Barcelona will win the
Champions’ League, which could not be logically concluded to be true or false, were
considered meaningless (Levinson, 1983). Only when Austin’s (1962) theory of speech acts
was launched, did the changes occur. According to Austin, these above sentences when
uttered are not used to just say things or describe states of affairs but rather actively do things
such as raising a question, promising, or betting. He called these peculiar sentences
‘performative’ in order to differentiate them from the affirmative sentences, which he called
‘constatives’. However, after making a distinction between explicit performatives and implicit
performatives, Austin claims that there is no longer the contrast between performatives and
constatives. This is because constatives are also created by an illocutionary act (see below).
For example, the utterance It is raining is realized a statement, but it can also be used with the
first person singular I and a performative verb in the present tense to become an explicit
performative. Then, we have I state that it is raining. Yule (1996) formulates this deep
structure as follows:
I (hereby) Vp you (that) U

The formula is generalized by the Performative Hypothesis, which proposes that every
sentence has a deep structure of an explicit performative. In other words, all the implicit
performatives occurring in everyday conversations are originated from the deep structure of
explicit performatives. Nevertheless, as Do (2003) points out, the Performative Hypothesis is
collapsed for two reasons: first, in many cases, an implicit performative cannot be transformed
into an explicit one because one cannot find a performative verb which can be used to describe

it; second, when an implicit performative is made explicit by a performative verb, the meaning
of the utterance recognized by it can be changed. For example, a mother wants her son to turn
off the TV as he is always watching it. She says Turn off the TV but her son does not do that,
and she utters again I ask you to turn off the TV right now. In this case, one can see how the
mother’s attitude has changed when she makes an explicit performative.

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From Austin’s discussion, we can see that when we say something, we also do something.
And “actions performed via utterances are generally called ‘speech acts’” (Yule, 1996:47).
Austin argues that there are three types of acts: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and
perlocutionary act.

Locutionary act is the one, in terms of form and content, that uses linguistic elements such as
words, sounds of words, sentence combination to make a meaningful and well-formed
utterance.

Perlocutionary act is the one that brings about effects on listeners by means of utterances, and
is specific to the circumstances. For example, the utterance Turn off the TV spoken to the
addressee may make him/her turn off the TV, or it may also make him/her angry or
uncomfortable. The acts of turning off the TV, anger, or discomfort are all related to the
perlocutionary effects. The perlocutionary effects, though intended or unintended, are non-
conventional and are caused by some particular utterance in a particular situation.

Illocutionary act is the one performed via the conventional force in uttering a sentence with
some communicative purpose. The utterance Turn off the TV can be interpreted as a request,
an order, an advice, or a threat, depending on certain situations of communication. And this
called the ‘illocutionary force’ of the utterance. The illocutionary force is directly achieved via
speaker’s intention and a conventional procedure, whose operational rules, though not
represented in the utterance, are understood and followed by all the people in a certain

linguistic community. So it must be said that to master a language is not just simply to master
its syntax, phonetics, or lexicon, but to master the operational rules of the illocutionary act in
that language. That is to say, one must know how to make appropriately and effectively a
request, a promise, an invitation, a question, etc in the target language.

Among the three types of acts, the illocutionary act is the main focus of linguistic pragmatics.
And the term ‘speech act’ (Searle’s 1969 term) is exclusively used to refer to the illocutionary
act.

Although it is impossible to test whether an illocutionary act is logically true or false, it is
possible to examine whether it is appropriate or inappropriate when uttered. Searle (1969),
basing on the felicity conditions advanced by Austin (1962), proposes a set of conditions,
which an illocutionary act has to meet to be appropriate when uttered. This set includes

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propositional content, preparatory preconditions, conditions on sincerity, and the essential
condition. Content conditions indicate the content nature of an illocutionary act. A content
condition for a promise must be about a future event and the future event will be a future act
of the speaker. Preparatory preconditions include all what relates to the necessity so that an
illocutionary act can be performed. A promise needs to be performed by an agent and there
must be a beneficial effect brought about by it. Sincerity conditions concern with the
interlocutors’ psychological state. When making a promise, the speaker must have a true
intention to perform it, and the listener truly wants it to be performed. Essential condition
relates to an obligation the speaker or listener must follow when an illocutionary act is
performed. When one makes a promise, one is, right at the moment of speaking, obliged to
keep and perform it in the future. Each of these above conditions is the necessary condition;
and the whole set of them is the sufficient condition. A specific speech act needs to meet all
these conditions to be performed appropriately.

Another issue of speech acts is to classify them. Austin (1962) tries to do that work.

According to him, there are five categories: verditives, exercitives, commisives, expositives,
and behabitives. However, this classification is not satisfactory to Searle (1969). Searle claims
that Austin’s classification is based on taxonomy of performative verbs and so the overlap
between categories and within a category is unavoidable. He argues that classifying speech
acts needs basing on taxonomy of illocutionary acts, but not on performative verbs, and on a
system of criteria which is suitable to speech acts. From this point of view, he proposes five
basic kinds of illocutionary acts: representatives, which make the speaker’s words fit his own
belief or the world (e.g., assertion, conclusion); directives, which the speaker uses to get
someone to do something (e.g., requests, commands, orders); commissives, which the speaker
uses to commit himself/herself to do a future action (e.g., promises, refusals, threats);
expressives, which express the speaker’s psychological state (e.g., gratitude, apologies); and
declaratives, which the speaker, who has a special institutional role, uses to change the state of
affairs through his/her own utterance (e.g., war declaration, christening). That is Searle’s
classification of speech acts that is used widely to study a specific speech act or a set of
speech acts.

2.1.2. Indirect speech acts

LoCastro (2003) and Yule (1996) state that an indirect speech act occurs when there is an
indirect relationship between a structure and a function. The definition is built basing on the
relationship between the three structural forms (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and the

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three general communicative functions (statement, question, command/request). Do (2003)
makes it clearer by saying that an indirect speech act is an act in which the speaker performs
an illocutionary act and the hearer is to base on his/her own linguistic knowledge and non-
linguistic knowledge to infer the illocutionary force of another act. That is to say, an indirect
speech act is established from both speech production and speech comprehension.

However, the problem of indirect speech acts is how to use and recognize them (Searle 1969).

LoCastro also discusses indirect strategies and states that an indirect speech act can be
realized by sentence form such as It’s cold outside, modality such as Would you mind lending
me a couple of dollars for lunch?, or by conversational implicature such as Do you have any
homework? – I’ve already finished it. He also raises another question that why people use
indirectness so often though it requires much cognitive processing and is risky to be
misunderstood. He claims that there may be six reasons. First, interlocutors may want to avoid
a direct statement because directness may seem not to be tactful and sensitive to the feelings
of the hearer. Second, when indirectness is used in the past tense, it implies that no change can
be made and so communicative goal can be achieved. Third, indirectness is a good way of
denying perceived intentions, avoiding conflict, and escaping from responsibility for an
utterance. Fourth, indirectness is closely related to politeness and used to save face. Fifth,
indirectness can be creative and playful. Finally, indirectness is used as a strategy to gain or
maintain power over others.

2.1.3. The speech act of asking for something back

Like all the other speech acts, asking for something back occurs in all languages. But not all
languages perform the act in the same way. The speech act of asking for something back is
basically a speech act which is intended to provide some support for the speaker and some cost
for the hearer. Hence, it is a face-threatening act to the hearer as it contradicts his/her
expectations. Asking for something back occurs when the speaker actually or potentially
wants the hearer to give him/her back something that the hearer borrowed from him/her, and
believes that the hearer is to be responsible for giving the thing back. As a face-threatening
act, it requires a high level of pragmatic competence and a sensitive pragmatic task. The
speaker, thus, must be tactful and sensitive to produce language that is socially and culturally
appropriate. He/she has to behave so well that he/she both achieves his/her intended goal and
maintains the interpersonal relations.


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It is now necessary to make a distinction between the speech act of asking for something back
and that of requesting as the two acts are similar in some of the illocutionary aspects. They are
both directives, that is, they are attempts by the speaker to get someone to do something, and
impose on the hearer rather than on the speaker. They are thus realized via three level of
directness. Furthermore, they are also subject to modifications and can be encoded both from
the speaker’s perspective and from the hearer’s perspective. However, the act of asking for
something back differs from that of requesting in that, as mentioned earlier, it requires the
hearer to have responsibility for giving the object back to its owner; so the act can be still
performed in the absence of asking for the thing back. In addition, it can also imply some kind
of complaint to the hearer. Also, the variations of the act of asking for something back are
much greater and more context oriented than that of requests.

The similarity between the act of asking for something back and that of requesting allows the
act of asking for something back to be realized in the similar way as that of requesting is.
Hence, Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper’s (1989) three levels of directness for requests (direct,
conventionally indirect, non-conventionally indirect) and coding manual for analysis of
speech acts provide a highly suitable framework for the present study. From the framework,
the collected data for the study are first identified in terms of the level of directness: direct,
e.g., You give me back the book; conventionally indirect, e.g., Could you give me back the
book?; and non-conventionally indirect, e.g., I’m doing my assignment and need some
material. The data will then be coded as follows:
Lan, could you give me back the book? I need it for my assignment.
Head act: Could you give me back the book?
Alerter: Lan
Supportive move: I need it for my assignment.

2.2. Politeness

This section will review some main points in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory.

Brown and Levinson built their theory of politeness on the basis of the concept ‘face’.
According to them, “face is the public self-image that every member wants to claim for
himself” (1987: 61). This definition is explained more by Yule (1996: 60) as “face means the
public self-image of a person. It refers to that emotional and social sense of self that everyone
has and expects everyone else to recognize.”


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Face includes two types: negative face and positive face. Negative face is the wish and need to
be independent and free to do things and not to be interfered and imposed by others. Positive
face is the wish and need to be shared, respected, appreciated, accepted, liked, and treated as a
member of the same group. These two types of face are two mutual sides, but not separate.
That is to say, a violation of negative face can lead to the loss of positive face and vice-versa.

On the basis of the concept ‘face’, Yule (1996: 60) claims that “Politeness, in an interaction,
can then be defined as the means employed to show awareness of another person’s face”.
Politeness also consists of negative politeness and positive one. Negative politeness avoids
using face-threatening acts (FTAs) (Brown and Levinson’s (1987) term) or at least
compensates, mitigates the illocutionary force of FTAs. Positive politeness, by contrast,
flatters the hearer’s face and increases the speaker’s face as well.

Brown and Levinson claim that the majority of speech acts are potentially possible to threaten
interlocutors’ face. And so to lessen FTAs, interactants need to make a calculation of the
degree of face-threat that is to be compensated for by appropriate politeness strategies. These
strategies should be based on three factors: power, distance, and imposition, and they can be
described in the following diagram.


Baldly, without redress

On Record Negative politeness

Do FTA With Redress
Off Record
Don’t do FTA Positive politeness
Figure 1: Brown and Levinson’s (1987: 69) politeness model

Looking at the diagram, we can see that there are totally five macro strategies, which are
ranged from the most polite to the least polite: selecting not to perform FTA, selecting type of
off-record, selecting type of on-record with redress in respect of negative politeness, selecting
type of on-record with redress in respect of positive politeness, and selecting to perform FTA
without redress. Each macro strategy consists of a set of micro strategies. There are 15 micro
strategies for positive politeness strategy, 10 for negative one, and 15 for off-record strategy.

Politeness is a universal phenomenon in every society. However, the realizations of the
universals differ from cultures to cultures.


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2.3. Pragmatics

Many pragmaticists (e.g., Kasper, 1997; LoCastro, 2003; Verschueren, 1999; Wierzbicka,
2003; Yule, 1996) give out their own definitions of pragmatics. However, the present study
will accept Levinson’s (1983) point of view of defining pragmatics, which says “The most
promising are the definitions that equate pragmatics with ‘meaning minus semantics’, or with
a theory of language understanding that takes context into account, in order to complement the
contributions that semantics makes to meaning” (1983: 32). That is to say, semantics is
understood and studied in a narrow sense that concerns with the statement of truth conditions
alone; and pragmatics deals with a large residue of meaning which includes other elements of
communication content of an utterance (conventional implicatures, presupposition, felicity

conditions, conversational implicatures, and inferences). From the above viewpoint, the
present study adopts Yule’s (1996) definition of pragmatics, which says “Pragmatics is the
study of speaker meaning the study of contextual meaning the study of how more gets
communicated than is said the study of the expression of relative distance” (1996: 3).

2.3.1. Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP)

Interlanguage pragmatics is defined as “The study of nonnative speakers’ use and acquisition
of linguistic action patterns in a second language” (Kasper and Blum-Kulka, 1993: 3). The
term ‘interlanguage’ is used here to refer to the developing system of learners which is neither
that of their first language (L1) nor that of the second language (L2). Kasper and Blum-Kulka
(1993) specify five research areas of ILP: pragmatic comprehension, which concentrates on
the factors leading to less successful comprehension of pragmatic meaning; production of
linguistic action, which tries to identify the obstacles to learners’ contextually appropriate
production of pragmatic meaning; development of pragmatic competence, which examines the
development of L2 learners’ pragmatic ability; pragmatic transfer, which investigates whether
or where L1 transfer occurs and looks for the sources and factors resulting in the occurrence
of L1 transfer; and communicative effect, which puts an emphasis on the effectiveness of
learners’ language use. The present study will focus on the second area.

2.3.2. Pragmatic competence

The present study adopts Ellis’s (1994) point of view that “Pragmatic competence consists of
the knowledge that speaker-hearers use in order to engage in communication, including how
speech acts are successfully performed” (1994: 719). Pragmatic knowledge here should be

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distinguished with linguistic knowledge. Whereas the former is the speaker’s ability to use
language to achieve their communicative goals, the latter is the mental representation of
linguistic rules for correct language behaviours (Hymes 1972, cited in LoCastro 2003). Ellis

explains further that because both of them are related to ‘knowledge’, they should be also
distinct from actual performance.

A main component of pragmatic competence is learners’ ability to use an appropriate speech
act in a given event and to use appropriate linguistic forms to realize this speech act (Bachman
1989, cited in LoCastro 2003). This plays a decisive role in successfully communicating with
native speakers of the TL because L2 learners may have to encounter universal speech acts
and thus have the same realization strategies as native speakers do, but their choice of
strategies may greatly depend on their own cultures and languages. L2 learners, therefore,
must be aware of sociocultural constraints on speech acts in order to be pragmatically
competent.

2.3.3. Pragmatic transfer

Based on Ellis (1994), the present study adopts the following definition of transfer:

Transfer is to be seen as a general cover term for a number of different
kinds of influence from languages rather than the L2. The study of
transfer involves the study of errors (negative transfer), facilitation
(positive transfer), avoidance of target language forms, and their over use.
(Ellis 1994: 341)

From Ellis’s definition, we can see that transfer has a much broader scope than it used to do.
Not only habit formation but also phenomena such as avoidance caused by L1 transfer and
languages rather than L1 can be account for L1 transfer. Furthermore, the comprehensive
definition also takes into account of cases of L1 loss and incorporation of L2 features into the
native language. This sort of L2 influence on to the L1 also pertains to interlanguage studies
(e.g., Kasper and Blum-Kulka 1993; Sharwood and Kellerman 1986, cited in Bou Franch
1998; Takahashi 1996).

Following the above definition of transfer, Kasper’s (1992, cited in Bou Franch 1998)
definition of pragmatic transfer is adopted in the present study:


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Pragmatic transfer in interlanguage pragmatics shall refer to the influence
exerted by learners’ pragmatic knowledge of languages and cultures other
than L2 on their comprehension, production and learning of L2 pragmatic
information.
(Kasper 1992: 207)

As Bou Franch (1998) claims, Kasper’s definition is acceptable for three reasons: it is
process-oriented; it allows the study of transfer in learning and in communication; and it is
comprehensive. However, the study of transfer is not only to identify what is transferred but
also to determine under what circumstances transfer takes place. The conditions that promote
or inhibit transfer are called transferability constraints. Ellis (1994) reviews six ones that are
investigated to see what is transferred and what is not, and when transfer takes place and when
it does not. They are language level, sociolinguistic factors, markedness, prototypicality,
language distance, psychotypology, and developmental factors. Among these constraints,
sociolinguistic factors have been put more emphasis by ILP researchers. So the present study
takes into account sociolinguistic factors, which consist of the context-external factors (e.g.,
interlocutors’ familiarity, relative status), and context-internal factors (e.g., degree of
imposition). This is because, as Kasper (1992, cited in Bou Franch 1998) states, learners often
perform speech acts in respect of sociolinguistic norms of their native language though they
have been talked to be sensitive to sociolinguistic factors.

When pragmatic transfer is concerned with, it is also very important to talk about types of
pragmatic transfer. Kasper (1992, cited in Takahashi 1996) specifies two types:
pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic transfer. This distinction is based on Leech’s (1983)
discussion of general pragmatics and on Thomas’s (1983) study of cross-cultural pragmatic

failure. According to Kasper, pragmalinguistic transfer is the “process whereby the
illocutionary force or politeness value assigned to particular linguistic materials in L1
influences learners’ perception and production of form-function mappings in L2” (1992:209).
As to sociopragmatic transfer, Kasper states “Sociopragmatic transfer, then, is operative when
the social perceptions underlying language users’ interpretation and performance of linguistic
action in L2 are influenced by their assessment of subjectively equivalent L1 context” (1992:
209). Sociopragmatic transfer is evidenced in L1 politeness orientation and L1 communicative
style.

Hence, in the present study sociopragmatic transfer is regarded as learners’ use of strategies of
directness levels caused by L1 and whether or not and how often they use modifiers, and

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pragmalinguistic transfer is learners’ use of actual wording induced by L1, underlied
realization strategies and modifiers. Pragmatic transfer can be also divided into positive and
negative one. Positive transfer occurs when there is a similarity between IL, L1, and L2 in
using a particular pragmatic feature. Negative transfer occurs when there is a similarity
between IL and L1, but a difference between IL and L2 and between L1 and L2. In the present
study, only instances where pragmatic transfer occurs are reported.

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Chapter three: Methodology

3.1. Research questions

Basing on the aims set in chapter one, the present study will address three research questions
as below:
1. How do Vietnamese learners of English and English native speakers realize the
speech act of asking for something back in the contexts studied?
2. Do Vietnamese learners of English differ from English native speakers when they
perform the speech act in the contexts studied? If so, how?
3. Why are Vietnamese learners' performances different from native speakers'
performances?

3.2. Data collection method

Section 3.1 gives the advocacy of the discourse completion task (DCT) as the data collection
method for the present study. Section 3.2 discusses the design of the discourse completion
questionnaire.

3.2.1. The advocacy of the discourse completion task

So far several methods have been used to collect data serving cross-cultural and interlanguage
studies. First, it is ethnographic method. In this method data are collected through observation
and then recorded by researcher. The most advantageous point of this method is that it can
help gather natural or authentic data in everyday conversations. But the difficulty lies in the
fact that this method cannot help control contextual variables which can occur in the same
situational and interpersonal context. Furthermore, it also takes much time to transcript the
tape recorded. Second, role- play method should be taken into consideration, too. In this
method the subjects are asked to make face-to-face conversations, which are similar to natural
interactions. The conversations are then tape or video recorded to be used as data for study.
This method allows the control over the contextual variables, but the great amount of time
must be spent on transcription of recorded conversations, too. In addition, tape recorder or
video recorder is not always available to researcher. One method which can solve the problems
occurring with the above methods is discourse completion task.


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Discourse Completion Task (DCT) is a tool of data collection used widely in the studies of
speech acts. It consists of two different types: Oral Completion Task and Written Completion
Task. The first one is operated in the model of a closed role-play where the researcher
describes verbally a situation to the subject and asks him/her what exactly the person he/she is
role-playing would say in the situation. The second one includes written interaction situations,
each of which is briefly described and then followed by a short dialogue with an empty slot.
The subjects are then asked to fill in the slot by writing down what exactly they would say in
the situation. In a written completion task, a response may be provided as a cue or may not be
provided. The present study uses a written completion task without response as an instrument
of data collection. The reason for this choice is that although some difficulties such as non-
authentic collected data or the absence of prosodic and nonverbal features still remain, a DCT
brings us some important advantages. First, it can help us control the variables of internal
contexts such as social power or social distance, which Brown and Levinson (1987) argue to

have a strong influence to the choice of the linguistic forms in interaction, and of external
contexts such as age, sex, or level of proficiency. Second, a DCT also provides information
about the kinds of semantic formulas that learners use to realize different illocutionary acts.
This seems to be suitable for the study whose aim is to find out learners’ realization strategies
and specific features of a particular speech act. Third, a DCT can be an effective means of
collecting a large amount of data quickly and easily. This is also appropriate to the study in
which the time to carry out is calculated by months.

3.2.2. Data collection instruments

In the present study there are two questionnaires designed to serve the collection of necessary
data: a multiple-choice questionnaire and a discourse completion task. The MPQ is designed to
find out how often ESs and VSs ask for 6 things back in 6 different situations. The subjects are
asked to rate each situation on the basis of their own life experience on a 5-point scale, ranging
from never to always. In addition, there are also some empty slots in the end of the MCQ
where the subjects can write down other situations in which they often ask for something back.
Because there are two groups of subjects participating in this task, there will be two versions of
the MPQ: the English version used for ESs and the translated-into-Vietnamese version used
for VSs. In both versions, the situations in which the highest levels of frequency, namely
usually and always, are rated with the largest percentage are used to design the DCT. A sample
item of the MPQ can be given as follows:
Multiple-choice questionnaire
How often do the following situations happen in your daily life?

- 16 -


never sometimes often usually always

1. Your classmate borrows your book,
and HASN'T YET RETURNED IT.
Now you NEED IT and ASK FOR it.

The result of the data collected from the MPQ is calculated in percentage (%) and shown in
the following table.

Never Sometimes Often Usually Always
ESs

VSs ESs VSs ESs VSs ESs VSs ESs VSs
1. Book 7.1 0 21.4 20 14.3 20 21.4 36.3 35.8

23.7
2. Cash 28.6

31.6 7.1 29.5 0 18.4 28.6 20.5 35.7

0
3. Laptop

14.3

0 14.3 27.9 0 8.9 7.1 42.1 64.3

21.1
4. CD 14.3

21.2 7.1 0 28.6 48.8 21.4 20 28.6

10
5. Pen 7.1 0 28.6 40 14.3 24.7 28.6 25.3 21.4

10
6. Car 9.1 10 9.2 0 0 0 10.3 40 71.4

50

Table 1: The frequency of 6 situations by ESs and VSs

Looking at the table we can see that 3 situations (1. Book, 3. Laptop, 6. Car) are rated with
largest percentage by both ESs and VSs. So these situations are used to design the DCT.
However, these three situations are rebuilt in order to reflect the variables of social factors of
the contexts studied such as social power and social distance. The first situation involves one
staff in a multinational company lending his/her boss his/her car, and now he/she asks for it
back. The second one concerns with a person lending his/her important book to his/her close
classmate and then asks for it back. The last one relates to two brothers in a family; the
younger borrows the older’s laptop and says to give it back in two days, but three days goes by
and he hasn’t returned it. The older asks for it back. As an example, the first situation is
illustrated as follows:
DCT
Could you please read the following situation carefully then write your response in the space
provided? You can say as much or little as you wish.
Situation 1
You are one of the staff in a multinational company. Your boss borrowed your car a few days
ago and hasn’t returned it. You ask for it back by saying:



Similar to the MPQ, there are also two versions of the DCT: English version used for ESs and

VLs, and translated-into-Vietnamese version used for VSs. The data collected from ESs is






- 17 -
used to see how VLs perform the speech act of asking for something back differently from
ESs, and that collected from VSs is used as a baseline to see whether or not VLs’ language use
is affected by L1 Vietnamese.

In both questionnaires: MPQ and DCT, clear instructions are given at the beginning of the
questionnaires so that the subjects can have a clear idea of the content and be able to decide
how to respond in an appropriate way. Besides, additional information of the subjects’
nationality, age, highest education level, and occupation is also included in the questionnaires.
A full version of each questionnaire is provided in the appendices.

3.3. Subjects of the study

The subjects used in the study consist of three groups: English native speakers (ESs),
Vietnamese learners of English (VLs), and Vietnamese native speakers (VSs). The subjects
taking part in the MCQ are 29 ESs, 21 of whom are EFL teachers at British Councils and
Apollo Language Center in Ha Noi and 8 are tourists, and 30 VSs, all of whom are teachers at
Truc Hung junior high school, Truc Ninh District, Nam Dinh Province. Two weeks later, the
DCT is done with the participation of 33 ESs, 23 of whom are ELT teachers at the two above
language centers and 10 are tourists, 32 VLs, all of whom are grade 12 students of English
major at Le Hong Phong specialized high school, Nam Dinh Province, and 35 VSs, all of
whom are teachers at Truc Hung junior high school, Truc Ninh District, Nam Dinh Province.
One thing which should be noted here is that VLs in this study are determined to be high

beginners, and all the analysis and discussion would be based on this level of proficiency.

3.4. Analytical framework

There are three social factors: social power, social distance, and imposition that relate to the
data analysis procedure. But only the first two are focused on in the present study, since the
last one is hard to be examined via the DCT instrument. Hence, imposition is only referred to
when possible.

As mentioned in section 2.1.3, the speech act of asking for something back is similar to the
speech act of requesting in some respect. Hence, this study adopts the coding system for
requests utilized by Blum-Kulka et at (1989) and Ha (1998), but some changes can be made
when necessary. A speech act of asking for something back consists of a head act, which
conveys the illocutionary force, and with or without additional elements, which can include

- 18 -
alerters, internal or external modifiers. Here is an example Excuse me sir. May I have my car
back please? In this example excuse me sir functions as alerters; May I have my car back? is
the head act; and please is an internal modifier. The following section discusses different
categories of the coding system. But one thing which should be noted here is that all the
examples used in this section are extracted from my own collected data.

3.4.1. Alerters
An alerter is used to attract the hearer’s attention. There are three types of alerters:
Title or role: Sir, Boss, Mr Smith, etc.
First name: Jim, Kien, etc.
Attention getter: Hey, excuse me, hi, etc.

3.4.2. Realization strategies of the speech act of asking for something back
The head act of asking for something back can be realized by the means of the levels of

directness, which consists of three levels: direct, conventionally indirect, and non-
conventionally indirect. And each level may include several strategies.

3.4.2.1. Direct strategies
This study employs two direct strategies. They are imperatives and demand statements.
Among them, imperatives are considered to be more direct because it expresses the
propositional content explicitly. Demand statements are determined as a direct strategy when
they are used to realize the head act. But when they are used to modify the head act, they are
one of external modifiers and called demanders. Here are some examples of imperatives and
demand statements:
Imperatives: Oi, you! Give me my laptop back.
Give it back to me right now.
Demand statements: I need my book now, really.
I urgently need it back to continue the work I’m doing.

3.4.2.2. Conventionally indirect strategies
Conventionally indirect strategies are indicated by linguistic items which conventionally link
the form and prepositional content with the illocutionary force of a speech act (Yule 1996).
This study makes use of only one conventionally indirect strategy, namely query preparatory
strategy, but this strategy is divided into three sub-strategies: hearer’s ability, which refers to
hearer’s capacity to perform the desired act, hearer’s willingness, which asks for hearer’s

- 19 -
willingness to perform the desired act, and speaker’s permission, which the speaker uses to
ask for permission to carry out the desired act. Here are some examples.
Hearer’s ability: Could you give it back to me?
Could you return my car as soon as you have finished?
Hearer’s willingness: Would you mind giving back my car?
Would you give it back to me?
Speaker’s permission: I was hoping to use my car again if I could take it back please.

Can I have my book back?
As can be seen from the examples, query preparatory strategy in this study is not always used
in the form of questions, but in the form of statements, too.

3.4.2.3. Non-conventionally indirect strategies
Non-conventionally indirect strategies are realized when the link between prepositional
content, linguistic form and illocutionary force is open ended (Do 2003). There are two non-
conventionally indirect strategies used in this study. They are strong hints and mild hints.
Strong hints are used when the speaker does not express the speech act of asking for
something explicitly or directly, but refers to the name of the object he/she has lent in his/her
utterance while mild hints are used when the speaker makes an utterance that excludes the
name of the object he/she has lent. Here are some examples:
Strong hints: Sir, is my car OK?
Have you finished the book?
Mild hints: I know a good restaurant in the suburb. Let’s come there, shan’t we?
Are you getting on well with your study?

3.4.3. Internal modifiers

Internal modifiers occur in the scope of the head act, but they can be optional. The use of them
can affect the illocutionary force made in the head act. They can mitigate or intensify the
illocutionary force. When the first case happens, they are called downgraders. When the
second occurs, they are called upgraders. In this study downgraders are divided into syntactic
downgraders, which mitigate the illocutionary force by means of syntactic choices, and lexical
downgraders, which soften the illocutionary force by means of lexical choices. Syntactic
downgraders include past tense with present time reference, conditional clause, which is used
to distance the speaker’s asking for something back from reality, embedded clause, which is
used to express tentativeness, and modals, which is also used to convey tentativeness. Here are
some examples of them.

- 20 -
Past tense: I was wondering if you have finished using my car
Conditional clause: Would it be good if I picked it up soon?
Embedded clause: I wonder if you would be able to return my car
Modal: Can I get that laptop back off you?

Lexical downgraders consist of politeness markers, consultative device, downtoners,
understaters, and hedges. Politeness markers are words such as please, kindly used to increase
the degree of politeness. Consultative device are some expressions such as Do you think, Do
you mind, Is it all right used to ask for the hearer’s consent. Downtoners are some adverbials
such as just, possibly, perhaps used to downtone the illocutionary force. Understaters are
some phrases such as any chance, by the way used to understate some aspects of the desired
act. And hedges are words or phrases such as kind of, somehow used to convey the vagueness
intentionally made by the speaker about certain aspects of the desired act. Some examples are:
Politeness marker: Please give the laptop back to me.
Consultative device: Do you think you’ll be able to let me have my car back?
Downtoner: I was just wondering if I could possibly have my car back?
Understater: Oh by the way, I need the book I lent you.
Hedge: I kind of need my car back.

Upgraders are divided into intensifiers, which are some adverbials such as really, urgently
used to intensify the illocutionary force, commitment, which are adverbials such as certainly,
surely used to increase the speaker’s commitment to the prepositional content, and time
intensifiers, which are noun phrases or adverbials such as now, right now, immediately used to
intensify the illocutionary force. Here are some examples of them:
Intensifier: I really need it this week.
Commitment: I certainly need it back this afternoon.
Time intensifier: I need my laptop back now.

3.4.4. External modifiers

Unlike internal modifiers, external modifiers are outside the scope of the head act. They can
occur before or after it. External modifiers include mitigators, which mitigate the illocutionary
force of asking for something back, and aggravators, which aggravate the illocutionary force
of asking for something back. Mitigators are also divided into preparator, which is used to
make a preparation for asking for something back, grounder, which is reasons or explanations
for asking for something back, disarmers, which says that asking for the thing back is not

- 21 -
wanted but forced by circumstance, and promiser, which conveys a future promise by the
speaker. Here are some examples:
Preparator: You borrowed my car a few days ago but now I need it.
Grounder: Hey, we’re learning English tomorrow morning. Remember to bring my book,
please.
Disarmer: I’m sorry, but I really need my car back.
Promiser: If you haven’t finished it yet, I could let you borrow it again when I am done.

Aggravators are divided into demander, which is used to increase the imposition of the
illocutionary force by means of a need, and warner, which is also used to increase the
imposition of the illocutionary force but by means of warning or threatening. Here are some
examples, too:
Demander: Hey, give me my book. I need it.
Warner: Return it now or I’ll never lend you again.

- 22 -
Chapter four: Results and discussion


In this chapter, the results of the investigation are presented. First, VLs' use of strategies and
modifiers through 3 situations is reported. Then, ESs' use is reported, too. Next, comparisons
between VLs and ESs are made with regard to the levels of directness and modifiers. The aim
of these comparisons is to find out in what ways VLs perform the speech act of asking for
something back differently from ESs. At the same time the discussion is made when the
similarities and differences in performing the speech act between VLs and ESs occur. In the
discussion, the collected data from VSs can be used as a baseline to see whether or not the
differences between VLs and ESs in performing the speech act come from L1 influence.

As mentioned in previous chapter, there are 4 categories: alerters, realization strategies,
internal modifiers, and external modifiers used as analytical framework, and each category
consists of many individual items. In the present study the results are calculated between the
number of each item and the total number of the category used by each group of subjects in
each situation that the item belongs to. This percentage rate is symbolized F.

4.1. VLs' use of strategies and modifiers

One noting point here is that there are totally 32 VLs taking part in the DCT, but one of them

refuses to complete situation 1. Therefore, the calculation in this situation is done with 31
VLs.

4.1.1. Strategies

The use of strategies by VLs through 3 situations is described in the following table.

Imperatives

Demand
statements

H’s ability

H’s
willingness

S’s
permission

Strong
hints
Mild
hints

F %

F %

F %

F %

F %

F % F %
1. Car 2/31 6.5

0/31 0

6/31 19.4

5/31 16.0

6/31 19.4

10/31 32.2

2/31 6.5

2. Book 10/32 31.2

5/32 15.6

8/32 25

0/31 0

2/32 6.2

4/32 12.6

3/32 9.4

3.Laptop

19/32 59.4

0/32 0

0/32 0

0/32 0

1/32 3.1

11/32 34.4

1/32 3.1


Table 2: Strategies by VLs across 3 situations


- 23 -
As can be seen from table 2, VLs’ use of strategies changes according to different situations.
In situation 1, where the speaker has less power over the addressee, they rely heavily on
conventionally indirect strategies and strong hints to make up the speech act of asking for
something back. By contrast, in the two last situations, in which the speaker has equal or more
power over the addressee, VLs show their great preference to imperatives. That is to say, they

seem to be more direct in situations 2 and 3. This can be seen more clearly when their use of
imperatives increases through 3 situations, but that of conventionally indirect strategies
through 3 situations shows a decrease or even ignorance. But one noticeable point here is that
in situation 3 while VLs prefer to use imperatives (59.4%), they also employ 34.4% of strong
hints of the total. This makes their use of non-conventionally indirect strategies in situation 3
different from that in situations 1 and 2, in which strong hints are expected to be used more. In
addition, their refusal to use demand statements in situations 1 and 3 should be taken into
account here, too.

4.1.2. Modifiers

4.1.2.1. Internal modifiers

The use of internal modifiers in 3 situations by VLs is illustrated in table 3 below.













Table 3: Downgraders and upgraders across 3 situations by VLs

1. Car 2. Book 3. Laptop

F %

F %

F %

1. Syntactic downgraders


Past tense 8/37 21.6

3/26 11.5

0/15 0
Conditional clause 0/37 0 1/26 3.8 0/15 0
Embedded clause 2/37 5.4 0/26 0 0/15 0
Modals 17/37 46 10/26 38.5

1/15 6.7

2. Lexical downgraders
Politeness markers 7/37 18.9

4/26 15.4

6/15 40

Downtoners 0/37 0 0/26 0 0/15 0
Understaters 1/37 2.7 0/26 0 0/15 0
Consultative device 2/37 5.4 0/26 0 0/15 0

Hedge 0/37 0 0/26 0 2/15 13.3

3. Upgraders
Intensifiers 0/37 0 1/26 3.8 0/15 0
Commitment 0/37 0 0/26 0 0/15 0
Time intensifiers 0/37 0 7/26 27 6/15 40


- 24 -
From table 3, it can be seen that the total number of internal modifiers used by VLs decreases
gradually across 3 situations (37 times in Si. 1, 26 in Si. 2, and 15 in Si.3). But we can begin
with syntactic downgraders first. Modals are employed most by VLs, especially in situations 1
and 2, accounting for 46% and 38.5 of the total, respectively. Next comes to the use of past
tense in situations 1 (21.6%) and 2 (11.5). However, VLs’ use of past tense with present time
reference is completely relied on the past form of the modals can and will, namely could and
would. The similarity between VLs’ use of modals and that of past tense can be also seen
when they both show a decrease from situation 1 to situation 3. That is to say, when the
speaker’s power over the addressee increases, VLs’ use of modals and past tense to redress the
illocutionary force of asking for something back decreases. In addition, whereas showing
preference to modals and past tense, VLs employ conditional clause and embedded clause
very few or even ignore them in different situations. In terms of lexical downgraders, VLs also
show their great preference to politeness markers in 3 situations, especially in situation 3
(40%). Meanwhile, they make use of only 13.3% of hedge in situation 3, 2.7% of understaters
and 5.4% of consultative device in situation 1, but refuse to use these 3 modifiers in situation
2. What is more, they also refuse to use downtoners in 3 situations. The most noticeable point
with regard to upgraders is VLs’ refusal to employ them in situation 1. But their use of them
in situations 2 and 3 is also uneven. They rely mainly on time intensifiers (27% in situation 1
and 40 in situation 3), but use only 3.8% of intensifiers in situation 2 and ignore commitment
in 3 situations. However, we can see that the use of internal modifiers by VLs decreases
gradually through 3 situations.

4.1.2.2. External modifiers

The table below shows the use of external modifiers by VLs

1. Car 2. Book 3. Laptop
F % F % F %
1. Mitigators
Preparators 7/17 41.2

10/19 52.6

12/20 60

Grounders 4/17 23.5

0/19 0 2/20 10

Disarmers 1/17 5.9

2/19 10.5

0/20 0
Promisers 0/17 0 0/19 0 0/20 0
2. Aggravators
Demanders 5/17 29.4

7/19 36.9

3/20 15

Warners 0/17 0 0/19 0 3/20 15


Table 4: Mitigators and aggravators across 3 situations by VLs

- 25 -

In contrast with internal modifiers, the total number of external modifiers used by VLs
increases across 3 situations, though slowly (17 times in Si. 1, 19 in Si. 2, and 20 in Si. 3). But
there are two noticeable points in the use of mitigators by VLs. First, they show their great
preference to preparator to soften the illocutionary force made in the head act, and the
percentage of this modifier increases gradually through 3 situations. But the calculation also
says that 50% out of 60% of preparators used in situation 3 by VLs concerns with the due date
and overdue borrowing by the addressee and the speaker takes advantage of this to make a
preparation for asking the laptop back. Second, VLs refuse to use promiser as a mitigator in 3
situations to make up the speech act. Meanwhile, grounders are used situations 1 (23.5%) and
3 (10), and disarmers are employed in situations 1(5.9%) and 2 (10.5). With regard to
aggravators, VLs intensify the illocutionary force made in the head act by relying heavily on
demanders in situations 1 and 2, accounting for 29.4% and 36.9, respectively, whereas
warners are used only in situation 3 with the same percentage as demanders (15%).

4.1.3. Alerters

The use of alerters by VLs is shown in following figure.
0
10
20
30
40

50
60
70
80
90
%
Titles First names Attention
getters
Si. 1
Si. 2
Si. 3

Figure 2: Alerters across 3 situations by VLs

Looking at figure 2, we can see that only attention getters are made use of in 3 situations by
VLs. But their use of this alerter is different in different situations. Whereas they are
employed most in situations 2 and 3 (83.3% and 89.9, correspondingly), only 13.3 of them of
the total is used in situation 1. Similarly, first names are used in situations 2 and 3 though few
(16.7% and 11.1, respectively), but not in situation 1. On the contrary, titles are used so much
(86.7%) in situation 1 but is ignored in situations 2 and 3. In other words, VLs prefer to use
titles in situation 1 and attention getters in situations 2 and 3, and limit to use first names in 3
situations.