a politeness strategy in expressing sympathy by american and vietnamese speakers = chiến lược lịch sự trong việc diễn đạt sự cảm thông của người mỹ và người việt nam

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TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Background and significance of the study … 1
1.2. Objectives …………………………………. 2
1.3. Overview of the study……………………… 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
2.1. Speech acts …………………………………. 4
2.2. Politeness…………………………………… 7
2.2.1. Theory of politeness………. 7
2.2.2. Social factors affecting politeness …………………………………8
2.2.3. The notion of face ……………………………………………… 9
2.2.4. The notion of positive and negative politeness……………… …….9
2.3. Directness and indirectness………………… 10
2.3.1. Direct speech acts…………. 10
2.3.2. Indirect speech acts………… 11
2.4. Cooperative principles………………………. 12
2.5. The speech act of comfort…………………. 14
2.6. Politeness in expressing sympathy………… 14
2.7. Sympathy and antipathy…… ………………………………………… 17

CHAPTER 3: METHODLOGY 19
3.1. Research methods of the study…………… 19
3.2. Research questions…………………………. 19
3.3. Research design…………………………… 19
3.3. 1. Selection of subjects………. 19
3.3.2. Data collection instruments……. 20

3.3.3. Data collection procedure…. .23
3.4. Analytical framewor………………………… 24
3.4.1. Internal modification………. 24
3.4.2. External modifications……. 25


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3.4.3. The Head Act formula……. 26

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 29
4.1. The choice of strategy………………………. 29
4.2. The choice of External modification or Supportive Moves 30
4.3. The internal modifications……………………… ………….31
4.4. The realization of sympathy expression……… 32
4.5. Summary of major findings…………………. 33
4.6. Discussion of findings………………………. 34

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 37
5.1. Conclusion…………………………………… 37
5.2. Implications…………………………………………………………… 38
5.3. Suggestions for further study……………… 39

REFERENCES 40

APPENDIX A I

APPENDIX B IV

APPENDIX C VIII

APPENDIX D………………………………………………………….…….XII



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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts…………………………………….10
Table 2: The external modifications……………………………… 26
Table 3: Sympathy strategies by American and Vietnamese speakers ……….29
Table 4: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications between
two nations……………………………………………………… 30
Table 5: The range of selected internal modifications by two nations……… 31
Table 6: The realization of sympathy expression……………………… 32
Table 7: The realization of preferable sympathy structures………………… 36


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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: The choice of sympathy strategies …………………………… ….29
Figure 2: Different types of sympathy External Modifications…………… 31




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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1. Background and significance of the study

English has been one of the compulsory subjects in Vietnamese universities for
many years. However, the tendency in teaching and learning English has placed a great
emphasis on communicative competence. That means it requires the learners to be able
to use the language grammatically, appropriately ad effectively. In other words, the
learners must have the ability to say the right thing in the right situation in order to get
what they want. Nevertheless, the process of teaching and learning in Vietnam,
communicative competence has been paid little attention. Therefore, learners have
difficulties in oral communication though they can read or write well. Furthermore,
since the open door policy and recent social development, more and more Vietnamese
people have been now working in foreign companies and have to speak English in their
work; the need for oral communication in English is increasing. Apart from the
grammatical and lexical knowledge, much awareness in verbal communicative
competence has been paid attention to. In addition, in order to achieve the
communicative goals and avoid misunderstandings, learners have to develop a sense of
socio-cultural appropriateness. However, despite this increasing emphasis on sealing,
both teachers and learners still have difficulties in direct interaction with foreigners due
to the lack of knowledge of when, how and to whom to say what.
With an aim to improving learners‟ communicative competence, there have
been many English and Vietnamese cross-cultural studies on the realization and the
usage of such speech acts as thanking (Tam, 1990), offering (Lan, 2000), apology (Van,
2000), inviting (Hien, 2002), prohibiting (Thuc, 2001), etc. Those studies have shown
similarities and differences in the selection of the strategies and the distribution of
linguistic element.
Further, Vang‟s study (1990) in requests raises some significant concerns in
cross- cultural issues relating to request. His study shows that there are potential
differences in perspective and the use of politeness strategies in making requests
between Vietnamese subjects and Australian ones which are relevant to Vietnamese
learners of English.

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Similarly, in a study on complaining; Hanh (2003) pointed out the similarities
and differences in formulation of the speech act of complaint with respect to the use of
complaint strategies, directive acts and external modifiers. IT also showed a variety of
differences between Vietnamese speakers and Australian speakers. It concludes that
complaints can be realized in a great variety of forms depending on a particular context.
These studies have provided some significant insights in to both the problems
Vietnamese learners of English as well as area where Vietnamese learners have fewer
difficulties.
However, to date a study on politeness strategies of sympathy expressions in
American and Vietnamese has not yet been adequately investigated. Therefore, the aim
of this study is to compare the realization of the speech act of sympathy by Vietnamese
native speakers and the American speakers in order to fill in the gap in research in this
area.
This study concentrates on answering the following questions:
1. What politeness strategies do Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy
in the contexts studied?
2. What politeness strategies do American speakers use in expressing sympathy in
the contexts studied?
2. The scope of the study
This study is aimed at comparing sympathy expressions in Vietnamese with
those in English with particular references to the theory of speech acts. Besides, it is to
uncover differences in sympathy expressions of the two populations in terms of
linguistics.
The study focuses mainly on verbal communication and the analysis of the data
collected from the survey questionnaire on expressing sympathy. The target groups
who express sympathy are common American and Vietnamese speakers in all situations
from work to private home. Further, the study is confined to ten selected situations. In
such situations, the Speaker is familiar with the Hearer.
3. The organization of the study

The study is divided into three main parts
PART A INTRODUCTION introduces the background, the significance, the objectives
and the design of the study.


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PART B DEVELOPMENT focuses on the theoretical issues related to the topic of the
study. Firstly, it presents and discusses the issues of speech acts and the speech act of
comfort including the theory of politeness. Then the notions of directness and
indirectness in sympathy together with the matters of the conversational maxims, the
cooperative principles are dealt with.
It also presents the research questions and the design, the research methods including
the selection of subjects, data collection instruments, the procedure of the data
collection, and finally analytical framework of the study.
Besides, this part reports some findings on the strategy and the choice of external and
internal; modifications as well as the sympathy expression realization in relation to the
variables of Power, Social Distance and Ranking of seriousness in the context studied.
PART C CONCLUSION offers an overview of major findings and implications for
ELT in Vietnam and suggestions for further research.


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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides the literature review including the notions of speech act
theory, classifications of speech acts, some major issues of politeness in the
performance of speech acts in general. Besides, this chapter also deals with the issues
of directness and indirectness, the cooperative principle, the speech act of comfort.
Lastly, a view of politeness in expressing sympathy and the matters of sympathy and
antipathy are also presented in this chapter.

1. Speech act
This section begins with a brief overview of the theory of speech acts and then
the speech act classifications.
The theory of speech acts has been so far developed by many pragmatists such
as Austin (1962), Grice (1975), Searle (1969), Levison (1983), Brown & Yule (1983)
and others. What they share is that a speech act is a unit of speaking and each unit
performs certain functions in interaction such as request, invitation, complaint, apology,
prohibition, etc. Speech Act theory began with the work “How to do things with words”
by John Austin (1962). Austin was convinced that we do not just use language to make
utterances, but to perform actions. It was this conviction which led him to a theory of
what he called illocutionary act.
The speech act theory was then developed by another philosopher, John R.
Searle. He states that language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those
verbal acts such as requesting, threatening and promising, etc. That one performs in
speaking (Searle, 1969, p24).
Sharing the same idea, Nunan (1993: 65) finds out that “when using language,
we not only make propositional statements about objects, entities, states of affairs and
so on, but we also fulfill functions, such as requesting, denying, introducing,
apologizing, etc.”
When uttering a sentence, the Speaker is not only characteristically performing
several acts but also bringing a bout certain effects on the Hearer. According to Austin
(1962), and Searle (1969), a speech act always consists of three related acts:
Locutionary act, Illocutionary act and Perlocutionary act. First, the locutionary act is
simply the act that we perform in saying something or producing a meaningful


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linguistic expression. In Searle‟s view, a speaker performs illocutionary acts by
expressing his/her intention to get someone to do something, to assert something… in a
way that the listener can realize the speaker‟s intention. For example, one might say

“I‟m sorry to hear that you failed the exam”, this is an act of expressing sympathy.
When one says “I think you are playing music too loudly.” (1) This is an act of
complaining.
Perlocutionary acts are the effects of the illocutionary act. The Hearer
understands and gets the message as the Speaker intended and performs the act that the
Speaker wanted him to fulfill. Normally, the intended meaning is distinguished in the
forms or structure, the literal meaning of which does not directly relate to the intended
meaning. When saying (1), the Speaker wants the Hearer to recognize the effect he
intended, to turn the music down.
Of these three dimensions of an utterance, the illocutionary act is the only act
that puts the communicative force into the utterance. That is why illocutionary act
carrying the illocutionary force is the most important and the most discussed. In
Searle‟s view (1969), language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those
verbal acts such as promising, advising, agreeing, complaining, and expressing
sympathy that one performs in speaking. Further, Searle (1990:351) states that
illocutionary acts are the central to speech act theory. He divided illocutionary acts into
five major categories: Directives, Representatives, Expressives, Commissives and
Declaratives.
Representatives are speech acts by which Speaker commits himself to the belief
that the propositional content of the utterance is true. Statements of fact, affirmations,
belief and conclusions are examples. In using a representative, the Speaker makes the
words fit the world (belief).
Example 1:
A. It‟s hot here.
B. He could not finish his final test of English.
Directives are speech acts that embody an effort on the part of the speaker to get the
Hearer to do something, to “direct” him/ her towards some goals. They are commands,
orders, requests, advice, invitations, etc. In using a directive, the Speaker attempts to
make the world fit the words (via the Hearer).

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Example 2:
A. Please bring me the menu.
B. Could you get me a glass of water?
Commissives are speech acts that Speaker uses to commit himself to some
future course of action. They express what the Speaker intends. Speech acts belonging
to this group are promises, threats, refusals, etc. In performing a commissive, Speaker
makes the world match the words (via the Speaker).
Example 3:
A. I promise to give the book back to you after I finish reading it.
B. We will not return until mid-night.
Expressives are speech acts that express an inner state like feelings or attitudes
to some prior action or state of affairs. These can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes
or dislikes, etc. With an expressive, Speaker makes the words match the world
(feeling).
Example 4:
A. I am thankful for such good friends.
B. What a beautiful lady!
Declaratives are speech acts that make the world change via utterances. By
using a declarative, Speaker wants to make both the world match the words and the
words match the world.
Example 5:
A. I now pronounce you husband and wife.
B. Hereby, I declare this meeting open.
In this example, when (B) is said, a change really takes place people start to make
speeches or address the meeting and so on.
It can be seen that expressing sympathy is of Expressive type of illocutionary
act when people offer sympathy; they want to share others their feelings, especially
their sadness or disappointment. In Wikipedia, sympathy is defined as “a social affinity

in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her
feelings. It also can mean being affected by feelings or emotions.”
For example, when your son knew that he did not pass the entrance exam to university,
you might say to him: “I am sorry for that but you can try next time.”


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2. Politeness
In this section, a brief discussion of politeness theory is provided and its
influence on the performance of speech acts in general and speech acts of sympathy in
particular is discussed.
2.1. Theory of politeness
The concept of politeness was mentioned in 1870s. 100 years later, the most
influential theory of politeness was put forward by Brown and Levinson (1978). Central
to Brown and Levinson‟s theory of politeness was concept of face, as proposed by
Goffman (1967). Goffman himself (1967:65) defined face as “the positive social value
a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during
particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social
attributes – albeit an image that others may share, as when a person, makes a good
showing for his profession or religion by making a good showing for himself.” Within
politeness theory, face is best understood as every individual‟s feeling of self-worth or
self-image; this image can be damaged, maintained, enhanced through interaction with
others.
Yule (1996:60) also defined politeness in an interaction as “the means employed
to show awareness of another person‟s face. In this sense, politeness can be
accomplished in situation of social distance or closeness.”
Interestingly, politeness norms vary from culture to culture though there exist
many common principles of politeness and what is polite in this culture may be
impolite in another culture. For examples, in daily greeting routines, Vietnamese often
have the habit of asking each other questions such as “Where are you going?” or “What

are you doing?”. As for Vietnamese, this way of greeting is said to be popular and
polite because it shows the care for the hearer. However, if an American man was asked
such questions, he would think that Vietnamese were so impolite and curious.
2.2. Social factors affecting politeness
When we communicate with each other, our choice of expressions in a given context
will be influenced by numerous factors that identify our faces in society. According to
Crystal (1992), the language we use has a clear link to the following identities:
- Physical identity: Sex, age, physical type and condition.
- Psychological identity: personality, intelligence, etc.


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- Geographical identity: accents, dialects, linguistic areas, etc.
- Ethnic and national identity: ethnicity and nationalism.
- Social identity: Class, status, role, distance.
- Contextual identity: settings, participants and activities.
Among those identities, psychological identity is said to be one important factor
that affects Vietnamese people‟s choice of politeness strategy. Unlike the American,
Vietnamese people are more reserved. In other words, they are shy when expressing
their thoughts using politeness strategy.
Moreover, Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that there are three independent variables
that have a systematic effect on the choice of appropriate, polite expressions in
performing a FTA under a certain circumstance, outlined as follows:
- The social distance (D) of the Speaker and the Hearer.
- The relative power (P) of the Speaker and the Hearer.
- The absolute ranking of imposition (R) in the particular culture.
The social distance in Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) terminology is a symmetricsocial
dimension of similarity/difference within which the Speaker and the Hearer stand for
the purposes of this act. In effect, it is the degree of familiarity and solidarity the
Speaker and the Hearer share as represented through in-group or out-group

membership.
The assessment of D will usually be measures of social distance based on stable
social attribute and reflex of social closeness is, generally, the reciprocal giving and
receiving of positive face.
The relative power (P) is defined by Brown & Levinson (1987) as an
asymmetric social dimension of relative power or more simply it is the power of the
Speaker with respect to the Hearer. In reality, the power is the degree to which the
Speaker can impose his/her own plans and his own self-evaluation (face) at the expense
of the Hearer‟s plans and self-evaluation. Generally, there are two sources of P, either
of which may be authorized or unauthorized. In most cases, an individual power is
drawn from both these sources, which may overlap.
2.3. The notion of face
Within their everyday social interactions, people generally behave as if their
expectations concerning their public self-image, or their face wants will be respected.


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According to Brown &Levinson (1977:61), face is the public self-image that every
ember wants to claim for himself, that is emotional and social sense of self that
everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize. “Face” closely relates to the
concept of politeness. This is a highly abstract notion but significant to understand
politeness.
According to Yule (1996), if a speaker says something that represents a threat to
another individual‟s expectation regarding self-image, it is described as a face
threatening act (FTA). On the contrary, the speaker can say something to lessen the
possible threat. This is called a face saving act. Yule also points out that there are
many different ways of performing face saving acts because it is generally expected
that each person will attempt to respect the face wants of others.
2.4. The notion of negative and positive face
Brown and Levinson (1978: 61) distinguished two components of face: positive

face and negative face ,which were two related aspects of the same entity and referred
to two basic „desires‟ or „wants‟ of any individual in any interaction. An individual‟s
positive face was reflected in his or her desire to be liked, approved of, respected and
appreciated by others. An individual negative face was reflected by the desire not to be
impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chose.
According to Yule (1996, p62), a face saving act which is oriented to the person‟s
negative face will tend to show deference, emphasize the importance of the
interruption. This is also called negative politeness. A face saving act which is
concerned with the person‟s positive face will tend to show solidarity, emphasize that
both speakers want the same thing, and that they have a common goal. This is also
called positive politeness.
3. Directness and indirect speech act
Pragmatic literature classifies speech act according to the degree of their
explicitness or directness. Speech acts could be replaced on a continuum ranging from
the most direct down to the least direct act which may even be confused with normal
constative utterance. It is important that speakers be aware of this continuum because
the degree of explicitness that is opposite for a given social context is vital to observe.
Any failure in this respect can misfire and cause undesirable effects.
3.1. Direct speech acts


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Direct speech acts are those acts where the utterance explicitly abides by its
felicity conditions (especially the structural ones). There are three basic types of direct
speech acts, and they correspond to three special syntactic types that seem to occur in
most of the world‟s languages.
Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts
Speech act
Sentence
type

Function
Examples
Assertion
Declarative
Conveys information,
either true or false
“I passed my final
exam.”
Question
Interrogative
Elicits information
“Did you pass your final
exam?”
Orders and
requests
Imperative
Causes others to behave in
certain ways
“Pass your final exam!”

Although assertions, questions and orders are fairly universal, and most of the
world‟s languages have specific syntactic constructions that distinguish them, other
speech acts do not have a syntactic construction that is specific to them. Please have a
look at the sentence below.
(A) If you move, I‟ll shoot you!
Most American speakers would have no difficulty identifying such an utterance
as a threat. However, English has no special sentence form for threats. The if-
construction used in (A) is not specific to the speech act of threatening. Such a
construction might also express a promise, as in:
(B) If you pass your final exam, I‟ll buy you a new motorbike!

Or simply a cause and effect relationship between physical events:
(C) If you heat water to 100 degrees Celsius, it will boil.
A consideration of the syntactic means available for expressing the various
speech acts leads us to recognize that even for the three basic speech acts laid out in the
table above, speakers may choose means of expressions other than the basic type
associated with the speech act is question.


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To some extent, this just reflects the existence of a diversity of means
expression, but a more pervasive reason is that speakers may use indirect rather than
direct speech acts.
3.2. Indirect speech acts
Indirect speech acts rely more on context in order to reconstruct the underlying
speech acts performed. They are used all the time, and become second nature to us.
Please take a look at the following example.
A: Has our son gone to bed yet?
B: His computer is running.
In this example, the speaker A has asked a Yes/No question. However, speaker
B did not follow up with such a reply. The point here is that B has just violated one of
the aforementioned Gricean maxims (Relevance). But B‟s response is not irrelevant. In
B‟s response,, it is understood illiterally. His answer assumes the son often works on
hiss computer until he is in bed. This is just one of many cases of an indirect speech act.
These acts violate at least one of the maxims. Good listeners/speakers notice that the
maxim is intentionally being violated, and can identify its intended meaning with the
knowledge of the context of the situation.
Leech (1983:108) has proposed a theory of politeness based on the cost and
benefit to the Hearer and the amount of optionality given to the Hearer. He claims that
one can increase the degree of politeness by increasing degree of indirectness of the
illocution because “indirect illocutions tend to be more polite since they increase the

degree of optionality and because the more indirect an illocution is, the more
diminished and tentative its force tends to be”. Therefore, in Leech„s (1983) view, the
more optionality that the Speaker allows for the Hearer, the more polite the Speaker
sounds.
For example, in communication with a student, the teacher may say: “Could you
tell me your answer?” The teacher‟s utterance is used in a polite and indirect way. By
doing so, the teacher (a) respects her student and encourages him to be self-confident
enough to speak out the answer, (b) does not use the power of teacher in the student,
and (c) gives a soft and nice request without imposing the reaction of the student by
using soft words like “Could … please ” Let us take another example. When your


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friend‟s house is broken in and a lot of her savings are stolen, you might say: “Don‟t be
sad….”
4. Cooperative principles
The causes of a conversation depend upon the various speakers‟ approach to the
interaction. The way in which people try to make conversations work is called the
Cooperative Principle. We can understand it partly by noting those people who are
exceptions to the rule, and are not capable of making the conversation work. We may
also find it useful deliberately to infringe or disregard it. – as when we receive an
unwelcome call form a telephone salesperson, or where we are being interviewed by a
police officer on suspicion of some terrible crime.
Grice (1975) proposes that in ordinary conversation, speakers and hearers share
a cooperative principle. Speakers shape their utterances to be understood by hearers.
The principle can be explained by four underlying rule or maxims. They are also
sometimes named Grice‟s or Gricean maxims. They are the maxims of quality,
quantity, relevance and manner. These maxims will be easier to understand when we
have a look at this example: if a woman is helping a man build a house, she will hand
him a hammer rather than a tennis racket (relevance), more than one nail when several

are needed (quantity), straight nails rather than bent ones (quality) and she will do all
this quickly and efficiently (manner).
 Maxim of Quality: speakers should be truthful. They should not say what they
think is false, or make statements for which they have no evidence. For instance, if I
say to someone visiting a Vietnamese newly-born baby: “Do not say “the baby is so
strong”, the implicature is that I believe to do so would make the baby‟s family
unhappy as it is their superstition that saying so would make the baby worse. Similarly,
this can also work with questions. If you ask me, “What is conversational implicature?”
I will assume that the question is sincere and that it carries the implicature that you
don‟t know what it is, that you want to know, and that you think I can tell you.
 Maxim of Quantity: a contribution should be as informative as is required for
the conversation to proceed. It should be neither too little, nor too much. (It is nor clear
how one can decide what quantity of information satisfies the maxim in a given case).
For example, someone said to me about the local football team “They are doing a good


21
job.” This implicature was that they were not on the top. If they had been, the speaker
would have said so.
 Maxim of Relevance: speakers‟ contributions should relate clearly to the
purpose of the exchange. For example, I say to a friend “Are you coming to the theatre
tonight?” and she replied “It‟s Peter‟s staff Christmas party”. This would seem to be at
a completely irrelevant remark if I did not know that Peter is her husband and that they
always go to each staff parties.
 Maxim of Manner: speakers‟ contributions should be perspicuous: clear, orderly
and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity. For example, “I got home and took a
bath.” Carries the implicature that I did those things in that order.
All these maxims can be flouted. Deliberate lies, rhetorical questions tautology and
even metaphors could be regarded as flouting one or more of them; and how often do
we try to change the subject with a tempting red-herring if we don‟t like the way the

conversation is going? The co-operative principle does not hold well in all
conversations all the time; but it does explain how we generally manage to understand
what people mean, even if it is not exactly what they say.
Grice does not prescribe the use of such maxims. Nor does he suggest that we use them
artificially to construct conversations. But they are useful for analyzing and interpreting
conversation, and may reveal purpose of which (either as speaker or listener) we were
not previously aware. Very often, we communicate particular non-literal meanings by
appearing to “violate” or “flout” these maxims.
5. The speech act of comfort
The Random House Dictionary provides a useful, non-technical definition of
comfort: “A written or spoken expression of one‟s feelings of freedom from worry or
disappointment or consoling, giving relief in affliction”. Comfort has been of special
interest to several scholars, who have gone beyond this definition to draw our attention
to other important features. Comfort is supposed to be an FEA (face-enhancing act) for
the hearer (H) (cf. Kerbat-Orecchioni, 1997: 14), because the speaker (S) undertakes in
this speech act to show sympathy for and soothe H‟s sad or hurt feelings, to encourage
him/her, to show S‟s willingness to help H, etc. The language philosopher Austin
pointed out that some utterances, such as comfort are more than expressions of how the


22
speaker feels. Each is also an action in the social world, which Austin (1962) called a
“speech act”.
The term sympathy is polysemous. In this study one meaning of sympathy is
described as it is used in the combinations „to feel sympathy for/with someone else‟ and
„to have sympathy for/with someone else‟. Sympathy is an emotion which is caused by
the realization that something bad has happened to another person. The range of
conditions that can trigger sympathy is relatively broad and extends from the
discomforts of everyday life (for example, working long hours) to serious misfortunes
(such as the death of a loved one, or living through a war).

In summary, sympathy is triggered by the realization of a negative emotional state of
another person. It can cause some emotional response in a person, yet there is little
evidence to suggest that it is associated with a bodily sensation. Sympathy can be
expressed to another person, but it is restricted to situations when the people are in
contact with each other. Since sympathy can be experienced in situations when one
does not know another person or has no contact with that person, this feature cannot be
regarded as an invariant of the meaning.
6. Politeness in expressing sympathy
As all linguistic actions involve face-threat of some kinds, people have to resort
to politeness principles or strategies when performing face-saving acts (FSAS).
Leech (1983:160) introduces a number of maxims, which are necessary as he urges, in
order to explain the relationship between sense and force in human conversation. They
range from those which have very extensive but by no means universal applicability, to
the some what idiosyncratic. The main maxims are:
- Tact maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which employ cost to other.
+ Maximize the expression of beliefs which imply benefit to other
- Generosity maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of beliefs to self
+ Maximize the expression of cost to self
- Approbation maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which express dispraise of other
+ Maximize the expression of beliefs which express approval of order


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- Modesty maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of praise of self
+ Maximize the expression of dispraise of self
- Agreement maxim:

+ Minimize the expression of disagreement between self and other
+Maximize the expression of agreement between self and other
- Sympathy maxim:
+ Minimize antipathy between self and other
+ Maximize sympathy between self and other
From face-saving view, Brown and Levinson formulate a theory in which
politeness is seen as strategic choices that interactants have to make only when face
interests are at risk the fundamental assumption of this theory is the combination of the
view of communication as purposeful – national activity and the concept of “face”.
Instead of principles, they suggest a set of five strategies in relation to face work.
Strategy 1: Bald on record
Strategy 2: Positive politeness
Strategy 3: Negative politeness
Strategy 4: Off record (implicature)
Examples from Brown and Levinson‟s polite strategies
Bald – on record
- An emergency: Help!
- Task oriented: Make me a coffee!
- Request: Keep quiet.
- Alerting: Fasten your seatbelt.
Positive politeness
- Attend the hearer: You must be tired; you have been working since early
morning. How about some rest?
- Avoid disagreement:
A: How is she, small?
B: Yes, yes, she‟s small, smallish, and um, not really small but certainly not very big.
- Assume agreement: So when are you coming to see us?
- Hedge opinion: You really should sort of try harder.

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Negative politeness
- Be direct: I‟m looking for a pen.
- Request forgiveness: You must forgive me but…
- Minimize imposition: I just want to ask you if I could use your computer?
- Pluralize the person responsible: We forgot to tell you that you needed to buy
your plane ticket by yesterday.
Off and on Record
- Give hints: It‟s a bit cold in here.
- Be vague: Perhaps someone should have been more responsible.
- Be sarcastic, or joking: Yeah, he‟s a real Einstein (rocket scientist, Stephen
Hawking, genius and so on)!
According to Brown and Levinson (in Thomas, 1995:169), the first decision to
be made is whether to perform the face threatening act (FTA) or not. If the speaker
decides to perform the FTA, he or she should adopt certain strategies. The choice of
strategy will be made on the basis of the speaker‟s assessment of the size of the FTA.
The speaker can calculate the size of the FTA on the basis of the parameters of power
(P), distance (D) and rating of imposition (R). These combined values determine the
overall “weightiness” on the FTA which in turn influences the strategy used. Therefore,
the speaker can use statements which are not directly addressed to the other. These
statements are technically described as being off record (hints). In contrast to such off
record statements, the speaker can directly address the other as a means of expressing
his/her needs. The most direct approach, using imperative forms is known as bald on
record (Yule, 1996:63).
7. Sympathy and antipathy
Sympathy means a "feeling with” objects; and that distinguishes it from
antipathy. Moreover, sympathy involves some reasoning and is thus on a level with
social values and above antipathy.
Sympathy usually indicates a sharing of the joy or sorrow that another feels. At
the least, it leads to an understanding of the other and consequently tends to bring

personalities into closer social interaction. One doubts if it could be reduced to the level
of "consciousness of kind” or “gregariousness," since they descend too deeply to be
called sympathetic relationships. For two organisms to be in sympathetic contact, they


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must have similar sensory equipment. This neurological likeness may exist only in
imagination, as in the case of the little girl who is sad when her doll is ill. This
identification of feeling may also be seen in the story of a woman who sympathizes
with her cat when it bears kittens or of the master who sat sadly by his dog as it
licked its wounds.
In antipathy, there is usually no indication that the individual recognizes any
sensory equipment at all in the object. This means that an individual is unable to sense
the experiences of the object. It holds just as true for the individual bearing a repellent
mark as for an inanimate object, and it is one of the chief barriers to the alleviation of
prejudice.
Sympathy and antipathy both represent identification with objects, and the
attraction or repulsion may be equally strong, but the attitudes b6hind them differ both
in kind and in polarity. An antipathy is not toward a whole person, for it does not
invade the realm of personality, even when it appears to do so. It is always directed
toward some particular mark. That is why one person can withdraw from another,
when the latter bears some disliked trait. This introduces the problem of interpersonal
relationships: antipathy may be extended to many people when antipathy is felt to one
characteristic. Numerous interviews demonstrate that people may be thus avoided; they
may still have likable traits; yet there is no way of avoiding the disliked object without
also keeping away from the individual.
Of the two feelings, sympathy is awakened much more slowly, for one may
avoid a person who bears an antipathetic trait, then recall later that one should have
been sympathetic. It is possible, for instance, to be antipathetic to crossed eyes and yet
sympathetic with the individual. However desirable such an awakening may be, it does

not happen often: antipathies usually do not arouse sympathetic sentiments. Indeed,
they often preclude the development of sympathetic social interaction, as in those cases
where race prejudice is sup- ported by antipathies. We would be very close to reality if
we spoke of "response" in matters arousing sympathy and of “reaction" where antipathy
operates.
In this chapter, the major issues of speech act theory and politeness in general
and speech act of comfort and politeness in expressing sympathy in particular have
been discussed. Besides, this chapter has also compared sympathy and antipathy and


26
reviewed the issues of directness and indirectness and the cooperative principle. Next
chapter will reveal the study methodology.


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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, the following issues have been investigated. Section 3.1 points out the
aims of the study whereas section 3.2. presents the research questions. Section 3.3.
describes the research design. The last section introduces the analytical framework of
the study.
1. Aims of the study
This study aims to find out:
1. The politeness strategies that Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy
in the contexts studied.
2. The politeness strategies that American speakers use in expressing sympathy in
the contexts studied.
2. Research questions
In order to identify the politeness strategies preferably used by Vietnamese and
American speakers in expressing sympathy, these research questions will be addressed:

1. What politeness strategies do Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy
in the contexts studied?
2. What politeness strategies do American speakers use in expressing sympathy in
the contexts studied?
3. Research design
In this section, all the issues involved in the design of the research will be
discussed: the subjects, data collection instruments, contents of questionnaires, and
procedures of data collection.
3. 1. Selection of subjects
Data was collected from two groups of subjects: one group of American
speakers of English and one group of Vietnamese learners of English. The first group
consists of 30 American speakers of English, 10 of whom are working in the offices in
Hanoi, 7 are teaching English at English centers and universities, 7 are educators in
American, 6 are tourists to Hanoi. Their ages range from 20 to 50 years old. Most of
them have graduated from universities; some of them hold M.A degrees in linguistics
or many other fields. They are of both sexes.


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The second group includes 30 Vietnamese subjects. 15 of them are students at
Hanoi University, 15 are officers in Hanoi. They are all of little command of English.
Their ages range from 20 to 38 years old.
Both groups of subjects were asked to assess the bank of 10 situations with a Meta-
pragmatic questionnaire and a Discourse Completion Task.
3.2. Data collection instruments
3.2.1. Brief review of data collection instruments
According to Tam‟s (1998) research, several methods have been used in
researching speech acts. In terms of ethnographic methods, researchers may observe or
record naturally occurring speech acts, along with the information about the age, sex,
status, culture, relationship on the interactants. Every method has its advantages and

disadvantages. The good point of this method is that the researcher can obtain linguistic
strategy actually used in various contexts in a given language and culture. However,
this method is time and money-consuming. This method also seems to be hardly
possible for the fact that Vietnamese learners of English seldom have the chance of
operating within a real target language environment and for many reasons they do not
want to be recorded.
Multiple choice methods, in which a series of questions are prepared with
answers and the subjects are asked to choose the answers they think are the most
appropriate, has been used by many researchers. This method enables the researchers to
get information from a large number of the subjects in a short time. However, it does
not provide as many possibilities in the case of open-ended questions and the subjects
may become inactive when answering the questions for the design of the questionnaire.
In this study, for the collection of sufficient data within the time and resource
constraints available, the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) (Cohen, 1996 – quoted in
Tam, 1998, p.47) seems to outweigh its advantages.
It allows elicitation of data from a large sample of subjects relatively easily, using the
same situations where contextual variables can be controlled. Further, the DCT is an
effective means of studying the stereotypical perceived requirements for a socially
appropriate response and is a good way to gain insight into social and psychological
factors that are likely to affect speech and performance (Beebe, 1985). Moreover,
Cohen (1996) assumes that the DCT and other written approaches not only save time


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but also can provide comparable data to that collected from oral role-play. He also
concludes that “discourse completion tests are an effective means of gathering a large
amount of data quickly, creating an initial classification of semantic formulas, and
ascertaining the structure of speech act under consideration”.
Based on the theory of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), two
questionnaires are applied into the study: Meta-pragmatic questionnaire (MPQ) and the

Discourse Completion Task (DCT).
3.2.2. Variables manipulated in data collection instruments used in the study
Among the social factors affecting the realization of sympathy expressions, the
social factors (Social distance, social power and the severity of offence) are the
variables of interest in this study. Brown and Levinson argue that three variables: the
relative power P, the social distance D and the seriousness of the sympathy has an
effect on the realization of the speech act.
The variable power (P) in Brown and Levinson‟s (1987) terms is defined as
either by the authority of one interactant over the other, or by the lack of authority. The
variable power is classified into: +P, =P and –P. If +P refers to situations where the
speaker has greater power than the Addressee while –P refers to situations where the
speaker has less power than the Addessee, and =P referes to situations where the
speaker and the Adressee are equal in power. However, the variable power will be
controlled in this study which means the variable P is equal across the situations
studied. Therefore the two variables D and R have been paid much attention to.
The variable social distance (D) refers to the closeness or familiarity between
participants. According to Brown and Levinson (1978, p.85), the variable D is also
divided into: +D, -D and =D. Last but not least, the ranking of seriousness of the act (R)
is also of importance. This variable indicates how troublesome an act is in a specific
context in a specific culture.
In short, these variables will be taken into consideration in building situations
for a MPQ and a DCT. However, two of these three variables will be controlled in this
study due to these reasons. As we may know, it is common sense that the speakers only
express their sympathy to their close friend, their relatives or a member of their family
and vice versa the hearers just share their sadness, disappointment or worry to someone
they feel close, familiar with in their relationship. It means that the variable P and D are