This thesis focuses on cross-cultural similarities and differences in giving comments on contestants’ performance by judges in Vietnam Idol nghiên cứu giao văn hóa việt - mỹ trong cách thức ban giám khảo đưa ra lời bình luận

iii

ABSTRACT

This thesis focuses on cross-cultural similarities and differences in
giving comments on contestants’ performance by judges in Vietnam Idol and
American Idol. Politeness strategies realized for giving comments are
analyzed with data taken from the video clips of the two shows.
The thesis falls into two major chapters:
Chapter I: “Theoretical preliminaries” deals with the notion of culture, crossculture, speech acts, classifications of speech acts, politeness, and politeness
strategies.
Chapter II: “Data analysis and findings”: Video clips are used to collect data
for the study. Giving comments which resorts to various strategies of
politeness is a flexibly and effectively communicative act in both Vietnamese
and American cultures.


iv

ABBREVIATIONS
A: American
CUP: Cambridge University Press
FTA: Face Threatening Act
H: The hearer
NP: Negative Politeness
PP: Positive Politeness
S: The Speaker
V: Vietnamese


v

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF STUDY PROJECT REPORT

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ii

ABSTRACT

iii

ABBREVIATIONS

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

v

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1

I.

Rationale

1

II. Aims of the study

2

III. Scope of the study

2

IV. Methodology

2

V. Comments on the informants

4

VI. Design of the study

4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

5

CHAPTER I: THEORITICAL PRELIMINARIES

6

I.1 Culture

6

I.1.1. Definition of culture

6

I.1.2. Language-culture interrelationship

7

I.1.3 Communication and cross-cultural communication

8

I.1.4 Culture shock

9

I.1.5 Communicative competence

9

I.2 Speech acts

10

I.2.1 Theories of speech act

10

I.2.2 Classification of speech acts

12

I.2.3 Commenting as a speech act

14

I.3 Politeness

15

I.3.1 Theory of politeness

15

I.3.2 Politeness principles

16

I.3.3 Politeness strategies

19

I.3.3.1 Positive politeness strategies

19

I.3.3.2 Negative politeness strategies.

22


vi

CHAPTER II: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

25

II.1 Information of American Idol and Vietnam Idol

25

II.1.1. American Idol

25

II.1.2. Vietnam Idol

25

II.2. Realisation of politeness strategies in giving comments on contestants’ 26
performance by judges in American Idol and Vietnam
II.2.1 Giving comments with both positive and negative politeness strategies

26

II.2.2. Strategies realized and discussed

27

II.3 Data analysis of strategies in giving comments on contestants’ 31
performance by judges in Vietnam Idol 2010 and American 2011
II.3.1 Data analysis

31

II.3.1.1 Top 4-judges’ choice- Vietnam Idol and top 4 perform American 31
33
Idol 2011
II.3.1.2 Top 3 Vietnam Idol and top 3 perform American Idol 2011

35

II.3.2 Major cross-cultural similarities and differences

35

II.3.3 Concluding remarks

37

PART C: CONCLUSION

37

I.

Summary of major findings

37

II.

Implications

38

III.

Limitations

39

IV.

Suggestions for further study

40

REFERENCES
APPENDICES

I


1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
I.

RATIONALE

It is of little doubt that language plays a very important role in human’s life. Then, English,
nowadays, has become an international means of communication in our modern life.
However, almost all of people learning English find very difficult to understand or to
convey English native speakers’ ideas or thinking, maybe, because of the cultural
difference between Vietnam and English speaking countries. Besides, the lack of the
learners’ awareness of the target language culture and the cultural differences is also the
source of culture shock in every aspect of cross-cultural communication. It is the reason
why those days, the study of communication and cross-cultural communication has
become an urgent need thanks to the popularity of mass media and the increasing demand
of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Doing research on communicative acts has,
therefore, been of great significance.
With the development of society, the need of entertainment has been increasing more
rapidly. People seek many ways to relax their mind such as go for holiday, go camping and
so on. However, the simplest way of entertainment is music. Many music shows and
games have been broadcasted on TV attracting the interest of most of people. Vietnam Idol
and American Idol are very famous shows of music nowadays. Besides selecting an
excellent contestant to become the idol of music, the audience also concern the manner the
judges give comments on the performance of contestants. Thus, Vietnamese – American
cross-cultural studies appear useful and vital in this way.
Commenting is common in many languages and cultures. It is realized by comforting,
showing concern or expressing likes or dislike or reaction, etc. with the hearer. Crosscultural study on judges’ commenting on contestants’ performance has not received much
concern form linguistics and researchers. Then, how do Vietnamese and American judges
give comments on contestants’ performance? How are the two manners different? Which
manner is a positive way? This leads the author to the decision to conduct a research into
“A Vietnamese-American cross-cultural study of giving comments on contestants’

performance by judges in Vietnam and American Idol” to find out the similarities and
differences in the manner of giving comments of Vietnamese and American judges on


2

contestants’ performance. The findings from the study hopefully would be a source of
assistance in understanding between the two cultures American and Vietnamese.
II.

AIMS OF THE STUDY

The aims of the study are:
-

To convey ways which judges give verbal comments on contestants’ performance

in Vietnam Idol 2010 and American Idol 2011.
-

To point out the similarities and differences in the manner American and

Vietnamese judges commenting in their target language and culture.
-

To answer the two research questions:

+ Which politeness strategies are used by Vietnamese judges and which ones are chosen by
American judges?
+ Who employs more politeness strategies in verbal communication: Vietnamese judges

and American ones?
-

To contribute to raise cross-cultural awareness in using verbal cues for foreign

language teachers and learners as well as other potential interactants of international
communication.
III.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study is focused on the verbal aspect of the act of giving comments by judges on
contestants’ performance after live show in the two latest shows: Vietnam Idol 2010 and
American Idol 2011 basing on the politeness theory by Brown and Levinson and other
linguistics researchers. Because of some limitations, the author only focuses on the final
round: top 4 and top 3 perform.
IV.

METHODOLOGY

This part is focused on a detailed depiction of the methodology applied in the research
paper. More specially, the size and characteristics of the research subject altogether with
research instruments, data collection procedure as well as data analysis procedure are put
into description and justification.
IV.1. Selection of subjects
In order to conduct this study, the researcher has employed top 4 and top 3 performs of
Vietnam Idol 2010 and also two ones of American Idol 2011. the research subjects in this
study have been chosen under the procedure of information-oriented sampling, as opposed
to random sampling. In these two performs of American Idol 2011, the researcher has

3

obtained 51 utterances of commenting; meanwhile, she has got 36 commenting utterances
of Vietnam version, which makes a total of 87 utterances. This size of the samples could
somehow be considered eligible enough for the researcher to carry out a reliable study.
IV.2. Research methods
To conduct the study, the researcher has employed two methods namely quantitative and
qualitative ones. The combination of these two methods has offered the researcher valid
data for later analysis.
Regarding the aim of the study, the researcher has found that quantitative is the most
feasible method to deal with the research problems. It is because in the social sciences,
quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical investigation of quantitative
properties and phenomena and their relationships. The objective of quantitative research is
to develop and employ mathematical models, theories and/ or hypotheses pertaining to
phenomena. The process of measurement is central to quantitative research because it
provides the fundamental connection between empirical observation and mathematical
expression of quantitative relationships.
Besides, qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic
disciplines, traditionally in the social sciences, but also in market research and further
contexts. Qualitative researcher aims to gather an in-depth understanding of human
behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates
the why and how of decision-making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but
focused samples are more often needed, rather than large samples.
IV.3. Data collection procedures
The data collection procedure has been divided into two successive phases.
Phase 1:
This phase has concentrated mainly on collecting 4 shows of American Idol and another 4
shows of Vietnam Idol. To be more specific, the researcher has spent a lot of time finding
then watching 12 Vietnamese episodes and 12 American ones then collected 4 episodes of

each version.
Phase 2:
The researcher has watched then taken notes all the transcripts of the commenting parts of
totally 8 American and Vietnamese shows. Afterwards, she has identified the strategies of
politeness used in every commenting utterance transcripted. Simultaneously, prominent


4

examples of each strategy have been noted down to exemplify the researcher’s later
analysis.
IV.4. Data analysis procedures
First, the verbal data have been interpreted into subtypes of politeness strategies. As
observed, there are seven strategies that are most commonly used by both Vietnamese and
American judges.
After that, the researcher has calculated the frequency of commentators’ using the above
politeness strategies. This step has been followed by her converting the frequency into the
percentile forms for comparison.
Finally, the researcher has compared the frequencies of politeness strategies used by
Vietnamese judges and American ones.
V.

COMMENTS ON THE INFORMANTS

In the two shows Vietnam Idol and American Idol, there are two groups of informants. The
Vietnamese group consists of 3 informants (one female and two males), but in the final
round, one informant is added. The second group was 3 judges (also one female and two
males).
Details of the informants’ parameters are:
-

Vietnamese group:

+ Two females: singer (Siu Black) and editor (Diem Quynh)
+ Two males: director (Quang Dung) and composer (Quoc Trung)
-

American group:

+ One female: singer/actress and record producer Jennifer Lopez
+ Two males: singer-songwriter Steven Tyler and music manager Randy Jackson.
VI.

DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The thesis consists of three parts
Part A: INTRODUCTION
This part includes the rationale, aims, scope of the study, methodology and design of the
study.
Part B: DEVELOPMENT
This part is divided into two chapters:
Chapter I: THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES


5

In this chapter, theories of culture, cross-culture, culture–shock, language-culture
interrelationship, speech act, and classifications of speech acts, politeness, politeness
principles and politeness strategies, definition of the two shows are critically discussed.
Chapter II: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

In this chapter, the author focuses on analyzing the manner of giving comments of judges
through the two shows with the illustration of video clips (if necessary). The similarities
and differences in the way of giving comments by Vietnamese and American judges are
drawn from detailed and critical analysis of data.
Part C: CONCLUSION
Summary of the major findings and suggestions for further research are mentioned in this
part.


6

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES
I.1. CULTURE
I.1.1. Definition of culture
Culture is often thought of as shared behavior and beliefs, but in any society, all
individuals never think and act exactly the same. Each author has different definitions of
culture.
Levine and Aleman (1993) think culture as
“a shared background (for example national, ethnic, religious) resulting from a
common language and communication style, customs, beliefs, art, music and all the
other products of human thought made by a particular group of people at a particular
time. It also refers to the informal and often hidden patterns of human interactions,
expressions and view points that people in one culture share.”
Here, it means that culture consists of everything that happens in our daily life. Most
people in a country have same habits or same patterns of thinking or behave similarly,
these are called culture.
Wardhaugh (1992: 217) states that: “A society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has
to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so
in any role that they accept for any one of themselves.”

Language and culture always keep changing, consequently, people’s behaviors and
attitudes seem to vary due in time and space.
According to Bock (1970:1),
“Culture, in its broadest sense, is what makes you a stranger when you are away from
home. It includes all beliefs and expectations about how people should speak and act
which have become a kind of second nature to you as a result of social learning.
When you are with members of a group who share your culture, we or you do not
have think about it, for you are all viewing the world in pretty much the same way and
you all know, in general terms, what to expect of one another.”
Culture is always the result of human intervention in the biological processes of nature. It
is the product of socially and historically situated discourse communities, created and
shaped by language. Culture is always changing because culture consists of learned


7

patterns of behavior and belief. More clearly, language can not occur alone and is never
separated from social activities and its culture.
I.1.2. Language-culture interrelationship
Otto Jespersen (1921) says that “Human language originated while humans were actually
enjoying themselves.” (cited in Karen Risager (2006:3) - Language and Culture: Global
Flows and Local Complexity). It means that language was created naturally in our daily
life, for example when we work; we have to use language to exchange our ideas or
important information.
According to Kramsch (1998:4), “language is the principle means whereby we conduct
our social lives. When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture
in multiple and complex ways.”
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using
complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex
communication.

In the “Oxford advanced learner’s Dictionary” (Encyclopedic edition, 1992:506), a
language is considered to be a “system of communicating with other people using sounds,
symbols and words in expressing a meaning, idea or thought.” This language can be used
in many forms, primarily through oral and written communications as well as using
expressions through body language.
Sapir (1921:207) defines that, “Language does not exist apart from culture, that is, from
the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines the texture of
our lives.”(cited in Karen Risager (2006:3) - Language and Culture: Global Flows and
Local Complexity) He considers culture as “what society does and thinks” and language is
“a particular how of thought”.
Language and culture always keep changing, consequently, people’s behaviors and
attitudes seem to vary due in time and space. Culture is the result of human intervention in
the biological processes of nature. So culture is always changing as culture consists of
learned patterns of behavior and belief. Meanwhile language can not occur alone and is
never separated from social activities and its culture. It is widely recognized that the
correlation between language and culture is undeniable.


8

I.1.3 COMMUNICATION AND CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Communication is a broad-ranging topic. Everyday we communicate with others in many
ways. Communication can be understood as the exchange and flow of information and
ideas from one person to another; it involves a sender transmitting an idea, information,
or

feeling

to

a

receiver

(U.S.

Army,

1983

cited

at

Effective communication occurs
only if the receiver understands the exact information or idea that the sender intended to
transmit.
According to many linguists like Saville Troike (1982:25), speakers must have to
communicate effectively and appropriately. They have to have linguistic knowledge,
interaction skills and cultural knowledge. Lustig (1996:28) states that: “Communication is
a symbolic process in which people create shared meanings.” To him, symbols play a key
role in communication process because they represent the shared and specific meanings
that are communicated. Language and communication are always changing along with the
change of society because communication is considered as a process in which meanings
are created and shared by groups of people as they participate in the ordinary and
everyday activities that form the context of common interpretations.
Cross-cultural communication referred to as intercultural communication is defined as
“an exchange of ideas, information between persons from different cultural
backgrounds. There are more problems in cross cultural communication than in
communication between people of the same cultural background. Each participant

may interpret the other’s speech according to his or her own cultural conventions and
expectations. If the cultural conventions and misunderstandings can easily arise, even
resulting in a total break down of communication. This has been shown by research
into real life situations, such as job interviews, doctor-patient encounters and legal
communication.” Richards (1983:92).
This is understood that cross-cultural communication is the exchange and negotiation of
information ideas, feelings and attitudes between individuals who come from different
language and cultures. It is clear that with the process of globalization, especially the
increasing of global trade, different cultures will meet, conflict, and blend together. People
from different culture find it is hard to communicate not only due to language barrier but
also affected by culture styles. As a result, if the cultural conventions and norms of the


9

interlocutors are widely different, culture shock or breakdown of communication can
easily arise because of misunderstandings or misinterpretations.
In brief, people of different cultures and countries have different ways of viewing or
interpreting the intention of communication. Therefore, speakers are unable to understand
other’s ideas not because of their limited competence of translation but due to cultural
barriers. Understanding the differences of cultures, communication and cross-cultural
communication enables participants to discover their own culture and to avoid
misinterpretations and then to behave themselves in a different new world.
I.1.4 CULTURE SHOCK
Culture shock is a term used to describe an anxious feeling when people move to a strange
place and meet with many unexpected situations. Many linguists give the definitions of
this topic.
To Foster, “culture shock is mental illness, and is true of much mental illness, the victim
usually does not know he is affected. He finds that he is irritable, depressed, and probably
annoyed by the lack of attention shown him.”(cited in Understanding Culture Shock at

/>It means that when one affects culture shock, he himself is not able to realize this
situation. As culture shock is mental illness, it makes our mind always anxious, nervous
and so on.
Valdes (1995:35) assumes that “culture shock is a common experience for a person
learning a second language in a second culture. Culture shock refers to a phenomena
recognizing from mild irritability to deep psychological panic and crisis. Culture shock is
associated with feeling in the learners of estrangement, anger, hostility, homesickness and
even physical illness.”
It is clear that many people face difficulty or anxiety when in strange and unexpected
situations as Harris and Moran (1998:226) say “culture shock is neither good or bad, and
necessary or unnecessary”.
In brief, culture shock is a common situation belonging to our mind. It is the stress of
moving to a new place and there are no fixed symptoms ascribed to culture shock as each
person is affected differently.


10

I.1.5 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
Hymes' original idea was that “speakers of a language have to have more than
grammatical competence in order to be able communicate effectively in a language; they
also need to know how language is used by members of a speech community to accomplish
their purposes.”
Canale and Swain (1980 - Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47.) defines communicative
competence in terms of three components:


grammatical competence: words and rules



sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness



strategic competence: appropriate use of communication strategies

Sharing the same point of view, Saville Troike (1982) states there are three essential
components of communication. They are linguistic knowledge, interactional skills and
cultural knowledge.
These perspective show the fact that linguistic aspects only are far to be enough for
appropriate use and interpretation of language in a community. Therefore, new methods of
foreign language teaching and intensive cross-cultural studies have been conducted so far
would avoid the language learners and cross cultural communicators from the culture
shock and communication breakdown.
I.2 Speech acts
I.2.1 Theories of speech act
Speech act is a term taken from the word of philosophers of language, John Searle
and John Austin in particular who assumes that in saying something a speaker also does
something.
Speech act theory was first formulated by the philosopher John Austin (1962). His theory
of speech acts emerges from his consideration, and rejection, of a distinction which he
sees as central to philosophy of language up to his own work. This is the distinction
between utterances which are meaningful, which are all thought to be statements of what
is or is not the case, and utterances which are meaningless. This view holds that only
statements are ever meaningful. But Austin rejects this pointing to another class of
ordinary utterances which are neither meaningless nor constative (i.e. of the nature of a

11

statement). He calls such non-constative, meaningful utterances ‘performatives’ since they
are utterances the production of which, given certain conditions (to be investigated),
serves as the performance of some conventional social act. So instead of the traditional
constative/nonsense

distinction

Austin

in

effect

postulates

two

distinctions:

constative/performative and meaningful-utterance/meaningless-utterance.
John Austin (1962) defines speech acts as the actions performed in saying something.
When people produce utterances, they often perform actions via those utterances. These
actions are called speech acts; for example: complaint, compliment, invitation, comment
or request. A speech art is part of a speech event. The speech act can be investigated under
three different headings: (1) as meaningful speech, (2) as speech with a certain
conventional force, and (3) as speech with a certain non-conventional effect. These three
related acts are called locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.


Locutionary act is the basic act of producing a meaningful linguistic expression.
The locutionary act is performed with some purposes or function in mind.



Illocutionary act is an act performed via the communicative force of an utterance.
In engaging in locutionary acts we also perform illocutionary acts such as
informing, advising, offer, promise, commenting…In uttering a sentence by virtue
of conversational force associated with it.



Perlocutionary act is what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as
convincing, persuading, deterring perlocutionary acts are performed only on the
assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended.

Of the three above acts, illocutionary act is of the most importance in communication as
an utterance can as it brings about various forces. The illocutionary act can account as a
prediction a promise or a warning. For example, the utterance “I’ll see you again” can be
interpreted as a promise or a warning. That is the reason why Yules (1997:52) explains
that “Speech act is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary
force of an utterance.”
According to the two other researchers Schmidt and Richards, “Speech act theory has to
do with the function of languages, so in the broader sense we might say that speech acts
are all the acts we perform through speaking, all things we do when we speak. The theory
of speech acts is partly taxonomic and partly explanatory. It must systematically classify


12

types of speech acts and the ways in which they can succeed or fail. It must reckon with
the fact that the relationship between the words being used and the force of their utterance
is often oblique.”
The theory of speech act has attracted the interest from a famous linguistics researcher
Blum-Kulka (1989:1) “Speech acts have been claimed by some (Austin, 1962; Searle,
1962, 1975) to operate by universal principles, and claimed by others to vary in
conceptualizations and verbalizations across cultures and languages. Their modes of
performance carry heavy social implications and seem to be ruled by universal principles
of cooperation and politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1978; Leech, 1993). And yet, cultures
have been shown to vary drastically in their interactional styles, leading to different
preferences for modes of speech act behavior.”
Generally speaking, speech acts are acts of communication. To communicate is to express
a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to types of
attitude being expressed. For example, a statement expresses a belief, an exclamation
expresses a feeling, a request expresses a desire…as a n act of communication, a speech
act succeeds if the audience identifies in accordance with the speaker’s intention, the
attitude being expressed.
I.2.2 Classification of speech acts
Austin (1962:151) divides the illocutionary acts into five major types of functions to
utterances. They are: verdictives (e.g. assess, appraise…), exercitivities (e.g. command,
direct…), commisives (e.g. promise, propose…), behabitives (e.g. apologise, thank…) and
expositives (e.g. accept, agree…)
This classification mainly focuses on how speaker realizes his/her intentions in speaking,
specifically, how much speaker wants hearer to believe in the utterance, how speaker
chooses the words/functions to express the meaning of the utterance, finally and how
speaker utters the sentence and addresses it to hearer on purpose.
Meanwhile, Searle (1976:10-16) pays attention to the way hearer responds to the utterance
intentionally. He classifies speech act into five types:
1. Declaration: changing the state of affairs in the world by utterance, such as I

bet, I resign…(a pronouncement at court)
For example: I hereby pronounce you husband and wife.


13

2. Representatives: describing states or events in the world (e.g. an assertion or a
report)
For example: It is a sunny day.
3. Commisives: committing the speaker to doing something (e.g. a promise or a
threat)
For example: I promise you that I will come back soon.
4. Expressives: expressing feelings and attitudes about something. They may be
statements of pleasure, pain, likes, joy or sorrow…
For example: It was great!
5. Directives: getting the listener to do something. They are commands, orders,
requests and suggestions
For example: You should go out with her.
Yule (1997:55) summarizes the five general types of speech acts with their key
functions as in the table below:
Speech act types

Direction of fit

S=Speaker X= Situation

Declarations

Words change the world

S causes X

Representatives

Make words fit the world

S believes X

Expressives

Make words fit the world

S feels X

Directives

Make the world fit words

S wants X

Commisives

Make the world fit words

S intends X

Table 1: The five general functions of speech acts (Yule: 1996)
Speech acts may be either direct or indirect speech acts depending on the direct and
indirect relationships between structures and functions.
The two other linguists Saville-Troike (1982) and Yules (1997) analyze speech acts in

terms of directness and indirectness: direct speech act verbs and indirect speech act verbs.
Saville-Troike (1982:36) points out: “As defined in speech act theory, direct acts are
those where surface form matches interactional function, as “Be quiet!” used as a
command, versus an indirect ‘It’s getting noisy here’ or ‘I can’t hear myself think’.”
More simply, Yule (1997:554) writes: “Whenever there is a direct relationship between a


14

structure and a function, we have a direct speech act. Whenever there is an indirect
relationship between a structure and a function, we have an indirect speech act.”
For example, such a declarative structure as “I will come back soon” can be realized as
a direct speech act if it is used to make a statement, but it can be categorized as an indirect
speech act if speaker means it to be a promise or warning.
I.2.3 Commenting as a speech act
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic, “commenting is the act of
expressing an opinion or reaction in speech or writing.”
Giving comment to contestants’ performance is, therefore, defined as the act of
giving an opinion or reaction to the performance of contestants. Here, “give” literally
means “offer” or “share” the understanding or experience of others. In brief, judges’
giving comments to contestants’ performance after their live show does not only mean the
mere verbal words of commenting, but includes the way judges comment. The What and
the How are both strongly emphasized in this act.
For example, American judges comment on contestants’ performance:
Very nicely done!
It was really beautiful.
In the light of speech act, these utterances are regarded as the act of expressing surprise,
and praise. The speaker here would like to give the feeling of happiness and surprise to
the success of the hearer’s performance. This is an expressive act.
Giving comments is also expressed in other acts.

For instance, Vietnamese judges give comments:
I will vote this song.
If I have a prize, I will give to you for your effort to this song.
These utterances are considered as the act of expressing the content or approval with the
performance of contestants in the light of speech act. This is a commisives act. Here, the
speaker makes promise with the hearer to express his approval or satisfaction with the
hearer. By promising something, the speaker offers his personal credibility in general as a
kind of guarantee that he will really perform the action.
When the speaker makes an utterance, he also has an intention in his speech. In term of
commenting, the speaker uses variety acts of expressing his opinion or reaction. In this
research, giving comments is analyzed in terms of verbal stimulus, with which the


15

utterances are expressed in the two shows: Vietnam Idol and American Idol. Non-verbal
communication, paralinguistic and extra linguistic factors of this act are not in the focus of the
study. Another factor should be considered is that the response of this stimulus is beyond the
scope of the study.
I.3 POLITENESS
I.3.1 Theory of politeness
The term “politeness” means something rather different from our everyday understanding
of it and focuses almost uniquely on polite language in the study of verbal interaction.
According to Richard J. Watts (2003:9), “politeness is not something we are born with,
but something we have to learn and be socialized into.”
The use of language is to carry out social behaviors where mutual face wants are respected,
can be labeled linguistic politeness. Yule (1996) says that, “politeness in an interaction, can be
then defined as the means employed to show awareness of another’s face.” Culturally,
politeness is seen as “the idea of polite social behave or etiquette within a culture.”
Politeness, as defined by Blum-Kulka (1987:140), is “a function of redressive action with

the latter having correlative relationship with indirectness.”
More clearly, Blum-Kulka states that politeness is “an interaction achieved between two
needs, the need for pragmatics clarity and the need to avoid coerciveness.” Here, by giving
this definition, the author makes an inference that it should be considered whether there is a
direct relationship between indirectness and politeness as to her “indirectness does not
necessarily/always imply politeness.”
Nguyen Quang (2005:18) gives different view of politeness, “Politeness refers to any
communicative act (verbal and/or nonverbal) which is appropriately intended to make others
feel better or less bad.”
Meanwhile, Leech (1983:104) defines politeness as “forms of behavior aimed at creating and
maintaining harmonious interactions.”
Hill et al (1986:349) view politeness as “a complex system for softening face-threatening acts
whose purpose is to consider other’s feelings establish levels of mutual comfort, and promote
rapport.”(cited in The Universality of face in Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory: A
Japanese

perspective

by

Peter

Longcope

at

www.justinecassell.com/discourse09/.../longscope.pdf)
Brown and Levinson, the pioneers in politeness research see politeness as “a complex system
for softening face-threatening acts.”

16

When we give comments to somebody, we often show our politeness by expressing
our awareness of another person’s face. In this sense, politeness can be accomplished in
situations of social distance and closeness. Showing awareness for another’s face is often
described in terms of friendliness, camaraderie or solidarity.
I.3.2 Politeness principles
From the view of politeness as “a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate
interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all
human interchange”, Lakoff (1975) suggests three politeness rules:
Rule 1: Formality: do not impose/ keep the distance
-

Could you possibly…?

There is a difference in power and status between the participants, such as a student and a
dean…This rule will avoid, or ask permission on apologize for making the addressee to
anything which he/she does not want to do.
Rule 2: Hesitation: offer options; let the hearer make his/her own decision
-

I wonder if…

-

I won’t be offended if you don’t want to…

The participants have approximately equal status and power, but are not socially close
such as a business person and a new client. Giving options means expressing oneself in

such a way that one’s opinion or request can be ignored without being contradicted or
rejected.
Rule 3: Camaraderie: make the hearer feel good
-

I highly appreciate your suggestion…

-

If it had not been for your help…

This is friendly or intimate politeness that encourages feelings of camaraderie. It is
appropriate to intimates or close friends.
According to Nguyen Quang (2005), a person’s negative face is the need to be
independent, to have freedom of action, and not be imposed on by others. A face saving
act oriented to a person’s negative face is called negative politeness. A person’s positive
face is the need to be accepted by others, to be treated as a member of the same group. A
face saving act concerned with a person’s positive face is called positive politeness.
Another researcher, Leech (1983:132) gives a politeness principles consisting of six
maxims. They are as follow: